Women are often regarded as counting amongst the most vulnerable social groups. Especially in
developing countries, women continue to have fewer rights and access to assets than men. As a consequence,
women have less access to decent work and are overrepresented in informal work that
can weaken the benefits earned through employment. However, for many impoverished women
informality offers the only opportunity to make ends meet.
Accordingly, in Côte d’Ivoire women are most present in informal employment. In the city of Abidjan
some women make a means of living through extracting valuable waste materials from streets,
drains and dumps. These so-called waste pickers rely on waste as the basis of their livelihoods. Thereby,
waste picking not only enables the making of livelihoods but also compensates for the failures
of the public waste services. As many other rapidly urbanizing areas in developing countries, Abidjan
faces the challenges of managing its increasing amount of waste.
This master thesis concerns female waste pickers who work on the waste dump of Akouédo in Abidjan.
It aims to deepen the understanding of women’s livelihoods as informal waste pickers and sheds
light on their roles, needs and priorities in the thematic area of waste management in developing
countries.
The study applies the sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF) as a major conceptual reference. Data
were collected during a field stay between April and August 2010. Thereby, three qualitative methods
were chosen: 1. semi-structured interviews, 2. focus group discussions and 3. field observations.
The interviews and focus groups were carried out with eleven female waste pickers and observations
were made at their working and living places on and next to the waste dump of Akouédo.
Additional data were collected from the husbands of the female waste pickers, their neighbors and
representatives of the formal waste management in Abidjan.
The results of this study reveal that the women’s livelihoods are exposed to several risks that influence
their access to livelihood assets. Most seriously, the female waste pickers suffer from negative
impacts on their health. More so, being labour migrants from the northern part of Côte d’Ivoire and
surrounding countries, their status in local society is very low. What they gain is a low income, if any
at all.
Three main factors could be identified that influence the size of these risks, respectively the women’s
access to livelihood assets: their backgrounds, strategies and activities, as well as the stage at which
they are on the recycling hierarchy.
Backgrounds: Côte d’Ivoire is traditionally a country with intensive internal and cross-border migratory
movements. The female waste pickers are from the northern parts of Côte d’Ivoire and the surrounding
countries Burkina Faso and Mali. As many other migrants they seek employment and better
living standards in Abidjan. However, a deep gap in Ivorian society exists between those people from
the North and the South. This social tension affects daily life and the low status of the female waste
pickers in the village of Akouédo.
Strategies: The female waste pickers follow three main strategies: restricting, supporting and investing.
The Burkinabé restrict most costs by living in marginal conditions as they want to invest back inBurkina Faso. In contrast, the Ivorian and Malian work as waste pickers to support their impoverished
families and make ends meet by paying current expenses or even investing in their children’s education,
improving housing, and meeting additional expenses.
Activities: The female waste pickers are involved in three main activities on the waste dump: collecting,
upgrading and selling. Data show that skilled and experienced women who have access to financial
resources mainly act in upgrading and thus, are not directly involved in collecting extracted valuable
waste materials on the dump.
Recycling Hierarchy: Waste pickers build the basis of the waste recycling industry in Abidjan. Especially
the collectors perform labour at the bottom of a large waste recycling chain while those women
who upgrade waste materials climb up the recycling hierarchy. They achieve a slightly higher income.
However, collectors as well as upgraders are exploited by intermediate dealers who buy extracted
materials from them before selling to industry.
It can be assumed that the structures and processes in which the female waste pickers are involved
also influence the women’s access to livelihood assets. Thus the study pays the greatest attention to
structures and processes in which the women are involved in the household, on the waste dump and
in the sector of the SWM in Abidjan.
Household: The women are responsible for the household and care of children, and in addition, they
play an active role in generating income. It can be said that the women’s participation in waste picking
promotes a more balanced division of labour on the household level.
Waste Dump: Gender inequalities also exist on the waste dump. It is hard for the women to participate
in waste picking as it is physically demanding work and follows the winner-takes-all rule that
puts women under the domination of men. What makes the female waste pickers most vulnerable is
their manner of working individually. They are poorly organized and even compete with each other.
Sector of the SWM: In addition, waste pickers are not integrated into the formal solid waste management
of Abidjan. They form the basis of the recycling industries in Abidjan and put in the most
intensive labour but receive the lowest esteem and are not recognized by the authorities. They do
not receive any legal protection. Authorities see no value in waste picking, ignore and neglect the
existence of (female) waste pickers. They regard waste picking as backward, unhygienic and not
compatible with the modernization of the waste management system in Abidjan.
As a final conclusion, it is recommended that the female waste pickers should start getting organised
in order to reduce their individual vulnerability. Getting organized could enable the women to examine
and articulate their collective interests and to actually realize them. The women’s income,
health and even status in society could be improved. Most important they could become visible for
the authorities, so that their rights and interests would become formally protected. The process
would be a critical element in the economic, social and personal empowerment of female waste
pickers that finally could promote gender equalities on several levels. The authorities should support
this process by integrating (female) waste pickers into the formal waste management. This process
would eventually also increase the efficiency in recycling and thus, the sustainable development in
Côte d’Ivoire.