Women Street Vendors A Sociological Study of Varanasi City

Abstract

Street vending is a global phenomenon and the most visible aspect of the informal newlinesector. Like other informal sector, street vending is characterized by low level of income, newlineeasy to entry, self-employed and involves large number of people. Women who have a newlinebroken family, divorced or separated from husband, insufficient husband s income and newlinepoverty, pressure from in laws to work; are the factors responsible for making women to do newlinestreet vending. It is not only a source of self-employment to the poor in cities and towns but newlinealso a means to provide affordable as well as convenient service to a majority of urban newlinepopulation. But now a days, vending sector almost lost their traditional way of doing business newlinein developed countries as they were doing in past. But, in developing countries, they are still newlinecontinuing their vending activity in a traditional way at a large scale. These countries a large newlinenumber of urban poor are involved in vending activity. But nowadays, these countries also newlineopen a door for the western business such as mall and marts. These mall and marts entered newlinethrough the metropolitan cities and succeeded in a way. But now these mall and marts started newlineto open in traditional cities in search of new markets for their goods/items. On one hand newlinewestern way of doing business trying to spread their market area while on the other hand newlinetraditional cities don t want to lose their ground as vendors newline