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access to services that reduce women’s unpaidcare and domestic work. The following sections lookat each of these arenas for action in greater detail.WOMEN IN INFORMAL EMPLOYMENTRealizing women’s rights at work—a key componentof substantive equality—requires that women canaccess employment with decent pay, safe workingconditions and social protection. However, in largeparts of the world, employment does not meet thesecriteria. Informal work is the norm in developingcountries, in both rural and urban areas. 186 In SouthAsia, sub-Saharan Africa and East and South-EastAsia (excluding China), more than 75 per cent ofall jobs are informal (see Figure 2.10). The poorpay and conditions that characterize informalemployment mean that these workers are morelikely to live in poverty than formal workers. 187Informal workers include those who are selfemployed—suchas street vendors and petty tradersin goods (food, small consumer items) or services(hairdressing, tailoring)—as well as subsistencefarmers, who grow enough food for their familiesand perhaps a little extra to sell or exchange. Butinformal work also includes waged workers indomestic or seasonal agricultural work, as well assubcontracted industrial outworkers who work fromtheir homes or small workshops.One of the most vulnerable forms of informalemployment is contributing family work. Globally,women are 63 per cent of these workers, who areemployed without direct pay in family businesses orfarms (see Box 2.3). 188 This limits their autonomy anddecision-making role within the household, as wellas their empowerment more broadly. 189How widespread is informal employment?Three quarters of the world’s poor people liveand work in rural areas. 190 Most derive theirlivelihoods through agricultural work, whichis almost always informal. 191 Figure 2.10 showsthat in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa,where agriculture remains a major employer,71 per cent and 59 per cent of employedwomen, respectively, are in informal agriculturalemployment, usually as small-scale farmers,compared to 47 per cent and 56 per cent of men.In East and South-East Asia (excluding China),one third of employed women and men arein informal agricultural self-employment. 192Informal wage employment in agriculture isparticularly important for women in South Asia,where out-migration means that tasks previouslyperformed by men—such as land preparation,crop cultivation, spraying pesticides, harvesting,post-harvesting and marketing of produce—are now performed by women, but for lowerwages. 193Gendered hierarchies within informalemployment mean that men dominate in themore protected and remunerative jobs at thetop (i.e., informal employers and informal wageworkers), while women are over-representedamong the least secure and lowest-payingoccupations at the bottom (i.e., industrialoutworkers/homeworkers and contributingfamily workers), as illustrated in Figure 2.11. 194In South Asia, for example, 64 per cent ofwomen compared to 54 per cent of men areself-employed, while 36 per cent of men arein informal wage employment compared to 31per cent of women. Even among informal selfemployedworkers, women tend to be clusteredin less remunerative activities. In waste-picking,for example, men usually collect the higher valuescrap metal, while women collect less valuableplastics and cardboard. 195 This segmentationcontributes to the wide gender pay gapsdiscussed above. 196