In Morocco, the share of households holding an informal production unit (UPI) remains more or less important. Over ten years, between 2014 and 2023, it will only have known a slight drop, from 15.5% to 14.3%, both in urban areas (17.2% to 15.6%) and rural (12.8% to 11%).
In its national survey of the sector, the High Commissioner for Planning (HCP) said this Wednesday that economic constraint remains the main factor in the use of this activity in 68.3% of cases, especially for women. 31.7% of the overall figure chooses this path “by preference or family tradition”.
“Before creating their UPI, 78.8% of managers were already active, especially in construction (81.4%), with strong gender disparities: 82.3% of men were employed against only 36.1% of women,” said the report, noting that almost 60% of UPI chiefs are former employees. Also, 38.3% of women have owned another UPI as independent, compared to 27.6% of men.
As such, HCP said that women are 71.9% to access the informal sector often per necessity, compared to 65.1% for men. 44% of women in the sector were inactive before the creation of their UPI, compared to 7.1% of men. As a result, the informal is a first gateway to the labor market for many workers, although it does not systematically guarantee a step towards a formal situation.
According to the report, the share of women from unemployment (19.8%) clearly exceeds that of men (10.6%), “reflecting a more frequent appeal of women with informal self-employment as an alternative to professional exclusion”.
This gendered reading also shows that women resort “less to self -financing and more to alternative forms such as inheritance, aid or donations, reflecting less financial autonomy at the time of the creation of their unity”.
In the sector, they also remain 30% to be faced with more difficulty in balancing between their professional life, against only 8.1% of men. According to the report, this is “a major issue for the autonomy and professional development” of women, whose constraints are added to the challenge of self -financing, with a low recourse to bank credit.
In this ecosystem, only 2.1% of UPI chiefs also have a bank account devoted to activity.
A precarious alternative to total inactivity
The report thus underlines “gender disparities in decision -making autonomy and conciliation between professional life and family life within UPIs”. In particular, it describes differences appear “in terms of income management, where men (96.4%) enjoy autonomy slightly higher than that of women (94.7%)”.
These differences contrast especially in the procedures for decision -making. According to the HCP, “almost half of women (43.4%) share decisions with their spouse, against 31.3% of men, and a significant proportion of men (19%) declares to make decisions with a partner, against only 10.2% of women”.
Notable gender disparities are also revealed in terms of distribution of the professional status of UPI chiefs before the creation of their unit. “Overall, the majority of UPI chiefs were employees (59.5%), followed by the self -employed (28%). However, more numerous women have exercised as an indebtedness (38.3% against 27.6% for men). On the other hand, men were more often employees (59.8% against 51.4% of women), “reports the survey.
At the national level, the HCP notes that households led by men have a rate of possession of 16.1%, against 5.4% for those led by women. In the urban environment, 18% of the former have a UPI, compared to 6.1% for the latter. The gap is widening in rural areas, with 12% against 2.7% respectively.
In addition, the heads of household aged 35 to 59 are more likely to have an IUP (17.1%), while the vast majority (92.4%) of the heads of informal units is male. Women heads of unit are almost absent in the buildings sector. “In the commercial sector, only 5.2% manage UPIs. In the service sector 8.2%. It is in the industrial sector that they are most represented with 20.9%, ”notes the HCP.
These figures are evocative, in a context where the shortfall of female employment remains important. In rural areas, it is estimated at almost 2.2% of the gross domestic product (GDP). While the economic inactivity of women represents more than 80% at the national level and only 19% have a job, the HCP previously recommended actions for empowerment, in order to recognize the “essential but often invisible” contributions of workers, especially in the countryside.
In 2023, employment in the informal sector generally represented 33.1% of non -agricultural employment. This downward trend concerns industry (37.2% to 29.3%) and services (21.5% to 20.6%), in parallel with an increase in trade (68.5% to 69.8%) and construction (21.4% to 25.3%). In volume, the use of the informal sector has also increased, from 2.37 to 2.53 million over the same period, or 157,000 jobs created.
