INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN BUSINESS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 10(6)(2021) 233-241 * Corresponding author. ORCID ID: © 2021by the authors. Hosting by SSBFNET. Peer review under responsibility of Center for Strategic Studies in Business and Finance. https://doi.org/10.20525/ijrbs.v10i6.1197 Vendor rights and violence: Challenges faced by female vendors in Zimbabwe Courage Mlambo (a) Mangosuthu University of Technology. Faculty of Public Administration and Economics A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 07 April 2021 Received in rev. form 25 July 2021 Accepted 22 Sept 2021 Keywords: Street Vending, Poverty, Police Brutality, Women, Development JEL Classification: O43 A B S T R A C T The paper seeks to highlight the challenges faced by women street vendors in Zimbabwe. The paper provides an overview of the brutal attitudes displayed toward women and young girl vendors by law enforcement agencies in Zimbabwe. Street vending is an important source of income for the poor in the developing world. Street vending activities contribute to the livelihoods of millions of people and to national wellbeing at large, especially in developing countries. Secondary sources including journals, newspapers and online news articles were used in the compilation of this study. These sources were analysed for any insights into women street vendors’ socio-economic status, police treatment of street vendors and working conditions. Street vendors experience arbitrary arrests, harassment, and confiscation of their wares and the government continues to move them out of the town and cities structures despite the unavailability of alternative accommodation. is a need for the government of Zimbabwe to see economic and social rights as a priority and the government should also protect women and girls from police brutality? Without the state’s protection, women and young girls who ply their trade in the street will remain in a state of harassment, beatings and arbitrary arrest by the police. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee SSBFNET, Istanbul, Turkey. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Introduction Street vendors are an integral part of urban economies around the world, offering easy access to a wide range of goods and services in public spaces (Reed, 2019). About 2.5 billion people, or half of the global labour force, work in the informal economy, the International Labour Organisation estimates (Recio, 2019). Street vending is the most visible form of this. Street vending is an important source of income for the poor in the developing world. Street vending activities contribute to the livelihoods of millions of people and to national wellbeing at large, especially in developing countries (Turner and Oswin, 2015; Uwitije, 2016). Low industrial growth, declining agricultural sector and limited expansion of formal sector employment in developing countries have increasingly forced the poor to take recourse to informal sources of livelihoods. Gamieldien, and van Niekerk (2017) concurs and states that although some hawkers are forced into the occupation by necessity or desperation, many acknowledge that it provides well for essential requirements, including shelter, food, education. Street vending is one such thriving source of self-employment across cities in the developing world. Abbot and Sotelo (2014) and Sharma and Pradhan (2017) notes that street traders operate is what is known as the ‘invisible economy’ and contribute largely to the national economy indirectly. Neary (2018) also provides a valuable service for the urban poor as it provides food and goods for a lower price. In several African countries, informal sector income accounts for over 40 percent of total urban income (Abbot and Sotelo, 2014). However, despite its importance and contribution to the economy, street vending remains overlooked by state authorities. Sverdlik (2019) notes that street trading can create vital livelihoods, especially for women, but these providers are usually ignored and remain invisible. informal workers - and their livelihoods - tend to be ignored or excluded in city planning and local economic development. Gamieldien and Van Niekerk (2017) and Harvey (2019) further argues that informal workers are often misunderstood and undervalued, and negative stereotypes and myths about their work persist. This is further worsened by the actions of governments Research in Business & Social Science IJRBS VOL 10 NO 6 ISSN: 2147-4478 Available online at www.ssbfnet.com Journal homepage: https://www.ssbfnet.com/ojs/index.php/ijrbs