Low-income entrepreneur faces invisible work – 12/30/2023 – Market

Carolina Nascimento, 28, has two children and works as a manicurist. She is separated from her youngest child’s father, although he contributes part of the child’s costs. She lives alone, pays rent, leaves her one and a half year old son at daycare early and works 12 hours a day at a salon in the east side of São Paulo, of which she became a partner.

The ex-partner picks up his son from daycare and stays with him until Carolina can pick him up. The eldest daughter, aged nine, is temporarily living with her father.

Carolina stopped studying at the age of 18, before entering high school, when she was pregnant with her first daughter. She wanted to go back to her studies, but she didn’t have time. She is also unable to do the consultancy provided by the entrepreneurship course she just took. Consulting is essential to help her manage her bills better, but in her free time she is a mother and housewife. She has no money left to hire anyone capable of helping her with these tasks.

“I’ve always been bad at math, I have difficulty calculating things. But to go back to studying, I would need someone to stay with Antony”, says she, who is from Salvador and has no close relatives in São Paulo.

Carolina’s case is far from isolated. According to a survey carried out by the national Sebrae in September, with around 7,000 entrepreneurs across the country, women spend around twice as much time daily on family care and household chores, compared to men. They are largely responsible for invisible work – a series of domestic tasks and efforts with dependents (children, the elderly, the sick or people with disabilities) that need to be carried out so that everyone can produce and fulfill their role in society.

According to the research, while women entrepreneurs spend, on average, 3.1 hours a day taking care of people, men dedicate 1.6 hours a day to the same task. Housework takes up 2.9 hours a day, while they spend 1.5 hours on the same task.

Researchers from FGV Ibre (Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Getulio Vargas Foundation) have already pointed out that, if women’s invisible work were counted, this effort would add at least 8.5% to Brazil’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

If reconciling your own business with the care economy is already challenging for entrepreneurs in general, the scenario gets worse when it comes to poor women. In Brazil, of the 29.3 million business owners, 68% have an income of up to two minimum wages (currently around R$2,600), according to research by Sebrae Nacional. In the lowest income bracket, women make up 36% of entrepreneurs, a share that drops to 28% considering the monthly income range of two to five minimum wages.

“The macho culture still privileges men in entrepreneurial activity”, says the director of Administration and Finance at Sebrae Nacional, Margarete Coelho. For her, it is essential to develop public policies that allow business owners equal conditions to compete in the market. When a woman owns her money, she says, she has the freedom to make choices. “This impacts different aspects of the economy and the lives of the population, including the reduction of domestic violence,” she says.

When it comes to low-income entrepreneurs, it is necessary to remember that most of these women live in poor communities, where public authorities do not take charge. “But rather a parallel, illegal power”, says Vinícius Mendes Lima, founder of the social development agency Besouro, which negotiates quotas with the private sector to finance entrepreneurship courses aimed at the base of the pyramid. “This only increases the degree of vulnerability for them and their families.”

In a territory where there is no public policy and there is no interest from the private sector in investing, activities are restricted to micro and small entrepreneurs. “These are women who often couldn’t get a job before getting pregnant, due to their low professional qualifications. After that, they spend up to ten years in limbo, until the child grows up,” she says. This is because large companies do not want to hire an employee with a young child who lives far away, as they will have to be absent in case of any of the child’s needs, she says.

If they live in a place where there is no personal or social support network, it is practically impossible to get a job, says the founder of Besouro, author of the book “Elaborate a business plan: by necessity – By necessity” (Essência do Saber, 2017).

“It is clear, then, that a minimum wage does not pay the entire bill: expenses for the house, the child and someone to take care of him while she works”, he states. “When you stay at home, your only salvation is to register with CadÚnico [Cadastro Único para Programas Sociais], as a beneficiary of programs such as Bolsa Família, for example. Any immediate additional income will come from entrepreneurship.”

At the end of October, Carolina Nascimento participated in one of the programs organized by Besouro, the “Meu Trampo” course, financed by the City of São Paulo. The program trained 8,345 people, in 139 neighborhoods in the capital of São Paulo. Women were the majority of students, 65%.

The report from Sheet He accompanied Carolina’s class during the five days of the course. There were 16 students who joined the class, with classes taught in the Jabaquara sub-prefecture, south of the capital. On graduation day, 14 graduated – 13 of them women. Most of them have difficulty starting the consultancy phase offered by the program (when a professional individually helps each student to put ideas and calculations into practice), due to the invisible work they undertake.

This is the case of pastry chef Shigeko Yamashiro, 53 years old. She is married and has no children. She took a basic confectionery course at Senac, in São Paulo, and began offering cakes and pies to acquaintances, while she was employed at her brother-in-law’s stationery store. But eight years ago the stationery store closed and she started focusing on the confectionery business. But its production is limited.

“I don’t have anyone to help me. I buy the materials, make the products, clean up all the dirt and make the deliveries alone”, she says. “My husband thinks I earn little and said that if we depended on my cakes to survive, we would have a hard time”, says Shigeko, married to a 60-year-old motorcycle courier.

“I have difficulty pricing and promoting my products, the course helped me, but I need to do the consultancy. I want the confectionery to guarantee my income, so I can live off it. But there’s no time: in addition to doing all the work myself , I still need to take care of the house and make food.”

Valdelice Santana dos Santos, 63 years old, also feels somewhat limited. Widow, retired cook, she joined the Meu Trampo program and liked it. “I had never done anything like this,” she says.

“It was good to meet new people, have a little fun,” says she, who has two adult children and five grandchildren. When she started the course, she didn’t even know what to work on, but she soon decided to do one of her specialties: cocada.

She soon became a supplier to the market in the neighborhood where she lives in Cidade Tiradentes, east of São Paulo. But an unexpected situation with her younger sister, 60, made her slow down. “She suffered her second stroke shortly after the course. She is married, has a child, but I feel responsible for her. I am the one who takes care of her and there isn’t much time left to produce more than three dozen cocadas a month”, he says .

Not all low-income entrepreneurs, however, feel limited in their potential. Tamirys Brainer, 30, left a year ago a job as an administrative assistant where she was a victim of bullying. She had already started selling semi-jewelry while she was an employee and found the courage to embrace her entrepreneurial spirit. “I had already worked as a salesperson and I know I was good at it”,’ she says.

In one year as an entrepreneur, she can earn around five times her old salary. The Meu Trampo course helped her to understand, however, that revenue is not profit and it is necessary to deduct all the fixed costs of the company that she “enjoys” of her home’s infrastructure. “I’m doing the consultancy and I’ve already learned that it’s necessary to consider the cost of internet, cell phones, transport and my own salary, among other costs, to know what the company’s profit is,” she says.

By the end of 2024, she projects to be earning twice as much. “It’s very tiring. I don’t have a weekend, I always need to be aware of social media and travel to clients, who are currently in my neighborhood”, says Tamirys, who lives in Jabaquara, south of São Paulo.

“But I know I can grow much more”, says the entrepreneur, who has the support of her husband, a kitchen assistant. Without children, they share all the housework.