WIEGO Blog

By Carlin Carr & Gabriella Tanvé

In Dakar, Senegal, the city’s dirty laundry doesn’t get cleaned on a spin cycle. 

Each day, women across the city spend back-breaking hours hand-washing the lot: thousands of pounds of dirty clothes, sheets, towels, and blankets. Often strapping a young child to their backs, the laundresses wait for prospective clients to approach them from their informal posts along the city streets. 

Par Carlin Carr

À Dakar, au Sénégal, le linge sale de la ville ne se nettoie pas au cycle d’essorage.

Chaque jour, d’un bout à l’autre de la ville, les femmes passent des heures à laver à la main des milliers de kilos de linge, de draps, de serviettes et de couvertures sales, un travail éreintant. Portant souvent un petit enfant au dos, les lingères de rue attendent que les clients potentiels se présentent à leur poste informel le long des rues de la ville. 

Urban employment trends in India have defied predictions and stereotypes. Rather than being increasingly absorbed into modern, formal wage employment, the urban workforce in India is becoming increasingly informal.

En janvier 2018, Dre Sally Roever, ancienne directrice du programme Politiques urbaines WIEGO, a pris la relève en tant que coordonnatrice internationale, un titre qui, dit-elle, reflète la structure « non hiérarchique » de l’organisation.

In January 2018, Dr. Sally Roever, former Urban Policies Programme Director at WIEGO, took over as International Coordinator — a title, she says, that matches the organization’s “non-hierarchical” structure. With a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Roever has spent the last 20 years studying the ways in which laws, policies, and politics — at the local, national, and international levels — shape informal work and informal workers' organizations, and vice versa.