Poverty forces many women to work in streets

from The Yemen Observer

Written By: Eman al-Jarady

Hadheah, a woman in her seventies, is used to begging on the streets for money to support her children. Divorced while pregnant with her fifth child, she was left to raise her children without help from their father or her extended family.

“When we got divorced, the father refused to take responsibility for the children, so I was forced to take care of them which caused a lot of problems for me,” she said. Hadheah’s family also refused to be of any assistance. To make things more difficult, she has no formal education, making it difficult for her to find work.

“I knocked at different doors, but no one cared. So I found myself in the streets begging and saving money for my children. It was especially difficult for me to beg in the extreme heat of the sun. Also, many men tried to abuse me,” she said.

Hadheah is not the only woman in Yemen who has been forced to make a living by working on the streets. There is an increasing number of women who have turned to begging or selling various products on the streets as a means of income. Poverty, and the absence of a central male figure responsible for taking care of the family, have both been identified as the main causes for the plight of these women.

Although poverty in Yemen is decreasing, the rate is slow - two percent in 2007 – leaving a large percentage of the population below the poverty line, according to the latest report addressing poverty in the country, organized by the Ministry of Planning and Cooperation. The report stated that the Yemeni economy depends on oil, which makes up 85 percent of the total income from exports. However, poor people do not benefit from this oil dependent economy because it fails to create job opportunities for them, especially in rural areas.

The number of Yemeni families dependent on the income of their female members has reached 11.7 percent, according to the annual report for the National Survey of Poverty in 1999. Since then the number of females who work, especially in the streets, is increasing, according to many people.

Most of the women find themselves in this position in order to obtain food for their young children. “My husband died after 10 years of marriage. I found myself alone with three children and needing the essentials to survive. But I did not approach my family because they told me I had to give my children to my husband’s family to look after, and I had to re-marry,” said Ward Ali, of Taiz. She said she preferred to take care of her own children instead of getting married again. “I used to work on farms with others where I was paid very little, but I accepted it because I was in need of that money. Now my children have become old enough and can take care of themselves.”

There are other women who raised their children in the hopes that they would eventually be under their care in return. But in most cases the mothers find themselves forced to continue to work to support their children even though their sons and daughters are old enough to not only take care of themselves but also their mothers. “My son accidentally killed a person. Now he is in prison serving a sentence. He has seven children with no steady job. As a result, I was forced to gather the necessary money to get him out of prison,” said Halema Mohammed, who is seventy years old.

Mohammed explained that she is unable to work because of her age, and so begging on the streets of Hada was a way to earn money.

“My husband died, and he left me a substantial inheritance, but my older brother took it and refused to even give me money to feed my daughters,” said Sameha Ahmed, a fifty year old woman in Sana’a. She had hoped to put her daughters through school in order to prepare them for life’s future difficulties. Her solution was to sell lahoh [Yemeni bread used in Safoot] at Bab al-Yemen, which she continues to sell. Some of her daughters are now married and they are all old enough to work and take care of themselves. Ahmed continues to work everyday.

Young girls can also be found begging or selling goods in the streets because their parents have forced them to do so. “My father refused to send me to school. His argument was that he had no money for food, and so he could not afford school fees and the related costs while the family needed food,” said 16 year old Ahlam Mohammed, of Sana’a. She said her father forced her and her brothers to sell handkerchiefs and bring him the money they made every night.

Other young girls have been forced to beg by their mothers who see it as a means of revenge against their husbands. “My father is very rich and can afford to buy food for us as well as house us and care deeply about us. But my mother has forced me to beg because she wants other people to laugh at him when they see his daughter on the streets,” said Amal, who is 14 years old.

Amal said her mother was motivated by her father’s marriage to another woman. “She did not think of me; did not think that I am a girl and many men will take the opportunity to abuse me.”

Poverty, single motherhood, responsibility for grown children - all factors leading to the harsh necessity for these women to work in the streets in order to meet their families’ basic needs.