CHAPTER ONE
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Street hawking, which is the act of selling retail goods directly on busy city streets is a major phenomenon in developing countries. In most African cites the problem is especially acute, and Lagos, the Nigerian commercial capital is no exception. Street hawking arises primarily because of rural-urban migration, unemployment, and the increasing number of school dropouts; It serves as a source of livelihood and in addition, an avenue also, to supplement family income. Rural poor youth moving into the city in search of non-existent jobs fail to find employment because of lack of education and employable skills.
They end up as street hawkers selling wares on major city streets (Asiedu, et al 2008).
Deaths, accidents and infections from the workplace have been contributing immensely to the global mortality rate. Annual death toll from unsafe occupation reported for 2006 was 1.1 million people. The recorded cases of fatalities in the workplace that led to complete disability was about 300,000 out of 250 million while over 160 million people were victims of work-related diseases (Ilo, 2006; WHO, 2006; llo, 2008; WHO, 2010)
Generally, both women and men are found concentrated in certain occupation, face similar conditions at work and experience the same workplace hazards.
In Sub-Saharan Africa region, working women are also traditionally responsible for the household chores. However, both sexes are physically different and women are more sensitive considering their reproductive roles. Gender variations are difficult to specify especially for a low-income economy. The global figures for 2008 show that out of 337 million occupational accidents, 358,000 were confined as fatal, while deaths from occupational related illness were 651,000 (WHO, 2010; ILO, 2006; ILO, 2008; Lu, 2(11). Observation from these data show that there is almost 77 percent increase in death toll from unsafe workplace between 2006 and 2008, 35 percent increase between the same period while the number of fatal accident increased by 19 percent.
Women make up 45% of the employed population in the EU (European Union for Safety and Health at Work, 2012), they constitute about 31.2 percent of Nigeria labour force (Eweama, 2009; National Bureau of Statistics (NBS1 2010). Across the Eastern, Middle, Western and Southern Africa regions, about 37, 25, 22 and 2 percent of girls respectively in age between 10 and 14 were economically active in the year 1990 (ILO, 1990; Bledsoe &Cohen 1993). The proportion in the next older age (15-19 years) was 62, 39, 45 and 29 percent respectively in the same year (ILO, 1990; Bledsoe & Cohen, 1993).
In Nigeria, the proportion of women in labour force is unfavorably compared to the men. A change in this paradigm as currently been driven by gender equality agenda (including equal employment opportunities and support for women enterprises that were enshrined in MDG 3 (UN, 2003; NPC & USAID, 2004; Oyekanmi, 2008; Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, 2008) can only be successfully achieved with the provision of safe working environment for women.