Abstract :
This paper examines the vulnerability of low-income urban women in the context of their most valuable asset, their labour. The prevalence of matrifocal households in Jamaica, particularly amongst the urban working class, has important implications for the role of women in the urban workforce. The restructuring of the Jamaican labour market under structural adjustment has been predicated to a large extent on the increased participation of urban women in the workforce. The need for women to increase their economic activity has been prompted by price inflation and cuts in government spending. Their increased participation has been achieved by their willingness to enter into poorly remunerated sales and service activity in the informal sector. Women in their productive role have been integrated into a labour market that has become defined as a supplier of cheap, low-skilled labour. This paper argues that the integration process neither addresses at a strategic level womenʹs position in the labour market nor provides at a practical level for the sustained elimination of poverty through reduction of vulnerability. Instead, women are being forced into employment by a set of demands that places necessary limits on their market capacity and thus a ceiling on their human resource potential.
