case study impacts informal THES

1. The impacts of covid
19 on women
working in informal
tourism in Peru
Dr Rosa Codina ( Oxford Brookes
University).
Research funded by PEC and the British
Council

2. Introduction to the
study
 Study funded by the PEC (UK Creative industries
policy and evidence centre) and the British
Council. Part of a wider remit examining the links
between the creative industries and the informal
sector in the global south.
 The study aimed to understand the underlying
motivations and conditions for women’s
participation in the informal tourism sector, and
the ways in which the pandemic impacted their
livelihoods.
 Eight virtual semi-structured interviews with
female informal tourism workers, government
stakeholders, and NGO actors took place between
the months of January and February 2021.
Pisac, Cusco (Sacred
Valley circuit)
Amazon region (San
Martin)
• Two women in their
forties working full
time in the informal
handicraft market of
Pisac (Cusco region), a
mature tourism
destination.
• One Indigenous woman
in her fifties working
part-time as a
handicraft maker. One
woman in her fifties
working full time as a
handicraft maker and
trainer.

3. Tourism and the
informal economy
 According to the ILO (2002), informal actors produce and
distribute legal goods and services, albeit their production
and employment procedures remain unregistered, and
may not adhere to legal norms.
 Women tend to work in accommodation, street vending
and handicraft production, with roles typically mirroring
or extending women’s domestic work (Cave and Kilic,
2010; Del Alonso-Almeida, 2012; Andersen, 2015), this is
the case in Peru.
 The informal and formal sectors are dynamically
interlinked.
 Very limited data available on the informal tourism sector
for most countries (particularly sex-disaggregated data)
(UNWTO, 2019).
 Women in the Peruvian informal sector face additional
challenges and precarious working conditions in many
cases (i.e. double workload, lack of formal protection,
inadequate infrastructural conditions, police harassment).

4. Findings:
Motivations
for joining and
staying in the
informal
tourism sector
 Scarcity of employment options but can be a
rational financial choice. Women valued:
Flexible working hours
Independence and freedom
Low entry barriers
 For women living in rural areas, work in the
informal tourism sector, was more easily
accepted within their communities as it could be
performed part time, from a home-based
setting, and tended to replicated gender
expectations.

5. Interview
quotes
• Maria (female informal artisan): I studied to be a
schoolteacher, but I never practised my profession because I
had to take care of my children…it became more profitable to
work here (Pisac handicraft market), I could take care of my
children, and it was more profitable than being a teacher, and
it was better for my children...it gave me flexibility.
• Julieta (female artisan working in the informal
tourism sector): Well, you’re free, right? You see how
you use your time, and you have time for your children.

6. Findings: Motivations for
joining and staying in the
informal tourism sector
 Women faced barriers at community and
governmental level which discouraged them
from creating formal enterprises or seek
further training. Participation in the sector was
conditional to male approval for some.
 Intersectional discrimination.
 Barriers to formalisation: complex bureaucratic
processes and associated costs, difficulty in
accessing governmental information, as well
as a lack of perceived benefits.

7. Interview
quotes
• Gaby (NGO manager): In terms of barriers to
formality, first there is the issue of high cost and a
high amount of revenue that stays within the tourism
supply chain, so in the end only a small percentage
stays within the actual enterprise…costs are
associated with taxes and bureaucratic processes.
So, this already demotivates them to become formal,
because if they do, the percentage from sales they
keep is less than 20%.
• Julieta (informal female artisan): It’s a cost and for
handicrafts, we earn money on a day-to-day basis
but it’s not constant… If you are registered with all
these state entities, you need an accountant to take
care of all the paperwork, right? So, all of that is a
cost.
• Gaby (NGO manager): There’s always a
‘comment’…there’s a general discouragement from male
counterparts in the community…comments like ‘why are
you doing this?…‘why don’t you cook instead?’, ‘why don’t
you take care of your children instead?’…they tell me
‘when we want to improve, we always find barriers, from
the Mayor to the councillor’…

8. Pandemic impacts
 The Peruvian state did not provide any targeted
financial assistance or programmes for informal
enterprises. Instead, the state provided two
economic aid bonuses targeted at families living
below the poverty threshold, emergency food
bundles and ‘JUNTOS’ (conditional cash transfer)
targeted at vulnerable groups (Andina, 2020;
CARE, 2021).
 Informal actors excluded from state programmes
possibly as a tacit mechanism to encourage these
to formalise.

9. Pandemic impacts
 Lending and funding programmes were implemented for the
tourism and handicraft industries through diverse funding
scheme and credit schemes facilitated by diverse
government ministries. However, these schemes were almost
exclusively directed towards formal tourism-related
enterprises.
 Although the criteria to participate in some of these schemes
were modified to enable the inclusion of a wider set of
participants, the complex application process and need for
formalisation evidence still excluded many female informal
traders (operating licenses needed and evidence of sales).

10. Pandemic
impacts
• In most cases, women also had to cope with a significant
increase in domestic responsibilities, including taking care
of sick and elderly family/and or community members.
• Pisac women used some of the transferable skills learned
during their time working in informal tourism (i.e.,
creativity, negotiation and sales skills, entrepreneurial
vision), to develop alternative entrepreneurial initiatives.
• Interviewed women in Pisac emphasised they were driven
to find alternate ways to earn an income outside of
tourism, since they had become used to financial
independence
• For the rest of interviewed women in other regions of Peru
from communities with non-tourism-centred economies,
the degree of adaptation was different from that of women
in Pisac

11. Interview
quotes
• Maria (Pisac informal female artisan): Due to the
pandemic I opened my own liquor store from home…we all
participate in it; my children also help…now in Pisac there
are more liquor stores than bodegas (small grocery stores)
… I even do deliveries, what else did I do during the
pandemic? I bought chickens, raised them, and then sold
them off, I also did chicken soup and sold it from home…. I
mostly sold soup to my family and friends…Really, I did
everything! I also sold honey…
• Maria: Listen, we are independent, we don’t want to have
to ask our husbands for money, right? Maybe I only needed
10 soles [approximately £2.00] so I could buy stuff for
myself, and I wasn’t going to ask my husband…

12. Pandemic impacts
 For the rest of interviewed Peruvian female informal
artisans, the pandemic also abruptly stopped their sole
source of revenue, particularly their access to handicraft
tradeshows known as ‘ferias’ (trading shows), which for
most was their main selling venue. Handicraft making
workshops, training workshops, and ‘ferias’ provided many
women with the opportunity to connect with other women
and build networks outside their own households or
communities.
 Established contracts with NGOs selling female
manufactured handicrafts stopped for many female
artisans.
 Impacts highlighted the over-dependence on third party
intermediaries, lack of digital literacy, and poor digital
infrastructure in rural areas.

13. Interview
quotes
• Susana (ex Ministry of Culture official): It’s been seven
years since I started working with the Awajun women in
the Cenepa… I bought a smart phone for them, I gave this
phone to the association president and taught him how
to use it…but he needs to cross a river because there is no
mobile coverage in his area...we also need to work closely
with the sons and daughters of informal artisans, who
are much more familiar with new technologies.
• Daniel (Ministry of Culture official): the reason why they
depend so much on ferias is because they don’t have
other places to sell, they don’t really have other ways to
sell…this is also why they end up becoming so dependent
on intermediaries both for exports and for local
sales…they don’t have access to direct selling points….

14. Conclusion and recommendations
 Need for increased flexibility in the conditions to be met for formalisation. Tailor-made fiscal mechanisms for
informal tourism actors are needed. This could include further state help with bureaucratic procedures,
simplification of some of the conditions to be met to obtain certifications, transparent access to formalisation
guidelines, and discounted tax rates to account for tourism’s highly seasonal earnings.
 The needs of informal female workers in Peru must be further incorporated into wider policy development and
assistance mechanisms. Short and medium term direct financial state assistance is especially needed during the
current crisis for informal tourism workers whose livelihoods rely on tourism.
 The informal tourism sector can empower women (financially, socially, psychologically) through the
development of transferable skills and financial capital. However, it can also create over-dependence on
intermediaries, limit the access to formal state protection schemes, and thwart the development of digital
literacy.
 Gender equality should be integrated in the design and implementation of any sort of tourism measure or
policy. For gender-responsive policies to be realised, further sex-disaggregated data on the nature of female
employment in tourism and the informal sector is urgently needed.