Curio trading a lucrative business for women

Curio trading in Zimbabwe provides the much needed employment and income that can sustain many households. Bulawayo City Hall is packed with traders selling remarkable African art, jewellery, beads and fragment flowers that fill the place with a pleasant scent, the place was established to promote the expression of artistic talents.

(BVTA) held a snap survey on gender dynamics in curio trading at City Hall and the research highlights the inequalities between men and women in curio trading.

According to Nyahunzvi (2015) curio trading in the world is deemed as the only sector with very low entry barriers hence, many Zimbabweans are into this kind of business. Richard (2007) posited that curio business in developing countries contributed immensely on the national purse, and provides vast employment opportunities to many people. The curio sector is a highly informalised business sector punctuated by a very small scale of production. O’brien and Feist, (1995) noted that in Morocco, the curio sector aggregately generated more than $1.5 billion dollars which benefited a third of the country’s population. In some places curio trading is so low to such an extent that one can go for months without recording a single sale. The African journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure, (2017) noted that the majority of traders in Victoria Falls indicated that they were earning an average income that was below 100 dollars because of lack of customers.

Women and curio trading workshops.
Women in curio trading at Bulawayo City Hall attend workshops in which they engage in intensive discussions. A workshop is a way for someone to pass important ideas to others. Workshops helps women to share their knowledge about the vending industry with others. In Workshops one gets a chance to connect with other informal traders and networking is vital to business success. Men in curio trading at Bulawayo City Hall don’t attend workshops because of lack of support from the people in their work place and they do not have anyone representing them.
“Only women attend workshops and it is an advantage for them because they learn new skills about the business”, said Crispen Matsika a committee member for curio traders at City Hall.

Conditions of curio trading spaces.
The working space for informal traders was organized by the Bulawayo City Council (BCC), however some women are not happy with the conditions of curio trading places because it does not protect them children from the bad weather conditions and this is not good for business as their attention will be now diverted to children and this has the potential to conflict with their economic work commitments. A decent trading environment is important to the traders because it has the capacity to add value to the projects.

Patriarchy and negative perceptions on women curio traders.
Patriarchy and negative perceptions on women that they are responsible for raising children has affected their business at the market place because they are regularly obstructed from their businesses to attend to children at home and this is a sign of gender inequality because at the end of the day some men make more profits than women.

Men and women bring different skills to the workplace, they also produce different wares at the market. Some have been making efforts to eliminate gender bias in the work place by supporting their female colleagues through learning how to produce wares that are produced by women in curio trading.

“There is gender bias towards some wares that can only be made by women and we also want to learn how to make some wares because we want to create a more equal world”, said Matsika
Some of the informal traders have never received any support from government and started their businesses using personal savings.

A large number of people from different backgrounds engage in production and selling of curios to eke a living. Market stalls for curio traders must be improved so that they attract quite a wide range of produce for consumers. Curio traders are recommended to form trade associations and social co-operatives to bolster their bargaining powers and to gain a competitive edge in the export destinations through enhancing togetherness in marketing and producing in bulk thus enjoying the advantages of economies of scale.

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