The Changing Role of Women in the Urban Informal Sector of Johannesburg

During the past decade a growing army of social scientists has been cutting a pathway through the undergrowth of ignorance surrounding our understanding of the world of those people whose lives are centered on the streets, backyards and other nooks and crannies of Third World cities. Not all the machetes have been razor sharp and some of the trumpeted advances in knowledge have lacked finesse. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic labours of the frontline geographical troops such as Terry McGee (1974, 1976, 1978, 1979), Milton Santos (1976, 1979), Ray Bromley (1978a, 1978b, 1981), Dean Forbes (1981a, 1981b, 1981c) and others have yielded fascinating new light on the hitherto dark recesses of life and existence in the urban informal sector. If the picture of everyday survival and struggle now being uncovered is less comforting than the initial conceptions of Kieth Hart and the ILO then at least the figures and structures of exploitation in the landscape are more sharply etched.