2024, Vol. 6, Issue 2, Part A

Part of the informal sector, street vending is a common method of sale and purchase of goods and services in India, of which food vending forms a significant portion owing to its daily requirement. Women in this occupational domain often run food vending stalls with their male kin such as husbands, fathers, or in-laws, and rely on their male counterparts for handling financial aspects and legal matters. The role of cooking is taken up by women, which can be seen as an extension of their role in the domestic space and illustrative of a gendered division of labor. To outline the challenges that women face as street vendors in India as embedded in a patriarchal social matrix and the multifarious factors that contribute to these challenges forms the core aim of this study. Adopting an exploratory approach, this paper would draw from secondary sources focusing on the conditions of women street vendors in India while also encompassing a few observations made during the ongoing fieldwork for my doctoral work based on the entrepreneurial aspect of street food vendors in Kolkata. Food vending businesses often hire individuals as apprentices, the latter often being women. They are assigned tasks such as preparing the food, washing utensils, and cleaning up. This group is more prone to exploitation of labor along with ill-treatment and harassment by employers and other vendors. Street vending as a part of urban society is considered a barrier for smooth traffic and pedestrian movement which makes street vendors vulnerable to legal action, to deal with which negotiations may be made with local authority structures. Women from lower socio-economic backgrounds have lesser access to education than men from the same background, which leads to a lack of awareness regarding vending rights and other resource avenues. Street vendors are often migrants who come to urban centres in search of better employment opportunities. It is difficult, however, for most women to migrate due to caretaking responsibilities that they have to perform for their offspring and in-laws. The few women who independently start vending businesses are faced with the struggle of building social networks due to gender biases and hesitation around interactions with the opposite sex.