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Amel Hadjadj and Kenza Khatto
This 43-year-old single mother who now works as a waitress in a bar-restaurant in Algiers has always worked without being declared to social security. By repeating this common saying, she meant to highlight that her priorities are focused more on the present than the future.
Incidentally, she considers herself lucky to have her job: she feels she is well-paid and is aware that women are rarely hired for such positions.
The case of S.D. is not a one-off. Many women across the country have, for different reasons, found themselves working in the male-dominated informal labor market. Women whose stories are all quite impressive.
“To live well, you have to know how to navigate your reality. I’ve always been good at that”
In the early 2000’s, S.D. was still living in Setif with her widowed mother and older brother, a young unemployed man who’d quickly abandoned the vocational training he was undergoing—“out of disgust,” she claims. He’d wished to have a military career, but their mother refused this out of fear of losing her only son, “the man of the house,” as she’d proudly say.
Unlike her brother who seemed to have resigned himself, S.D., after failing to pass her baccalaureate for the third time, decided to start working to help out her family who was at that point surviving solely off the late father’s reversionary pension. As soon as she’d made up her mind, she found a job in a small private company for a modest salary. Her brother was initially hostile to her decision but ended up changing his mind as soon as she received her first paycheck. She says she decided of her own free will to give him part of her salary.
“I was declared; I had a 3-month trial contract that had been renewed just before the tragedy,” S.D. bitterly recalls. Her only brother would disappear at sea shortly after, after taking a boat to Europe. When this tragedy hit, she was forced to stop working because her mother, unable to endure the shock, became severely depressed, and her health deteriorated rapidly.
"Almost ten years without any social security coverage—it didn’t worry me anymore. Working was enough for me to be happy"
Almost a year later, S.D. decided to look for work again. Her housewife role had become exhausting: “Aside from household chores, I had to take care of the bills, of my mother, look for traces of my missing brother—all with the added pressure of my father’s family. I had to find a way to occupy myself some other way while also earning money as I waited to figure out what my own destiny was,” she tells us, alluding to a potential husband.
But unlike the first time she tried to look for work, finding a job turned out to be a lot more laborious and complicated: “The only things available to me were under-the-table jobs, and despite my lack of training and diploma, it was out of the question for me to accept those.”
She pauses for a while then resumes, laughing, “la Z’har, la mimoun,” which means “neither luck nor fortune.” Almost two years later, still unemployed and having just lost her mother, she decided to leave her hometown. “Family members kept getting involved, even those I didn’t know. They wanted a death certificate to be issued for my brother, and they wanted to share the apartment. I’d had enough! On a whim and without thinking, I sold my mother’s gold, kept only a chain as a souvenir, and left to Béjaïa.”
“I started working in a restaurant, then another… in a few years, I must have taken up about ten jobs, all kinds of different positions. Almost ten years without any social security coverage—it didn’t worry me anymore. Working was enough for me to be happy, and I also maintained a social life.”
The unexpected pregnancy
In 2016, S.D. became pregnant by the cashier who worked at the same restaurant as her. He refused to marry her and recognize the child. The boss, complicit, decided to “stop her.” She says she tried to have an abortion, but it didn’t work. “And as soon as I found out I was carrying a boy, I decided to keep the baby. I needed a “man” in my life: it had completely changed, I’d already lost my father and my brother…”
Pregnant and having to deal with the reputation her former boss plastered on her, S.D. struggled to find a new job. So she decided once again to leave town: “I’d sold what I had left of my mother’s “scent” (the gold chain she had kept in memory of her) and managed to sell my furniture on my own,” she says proudly, adding, “even the television that helped me sleep, I sold it, and at a very good price too.” With the help of a loyal customer of the restaurant, S.D. was able to move to Algiers with her four-month-old baby. “It was difficult to work because I couldn’t afford to pay a nanny to look after my son. The day a friend of mine found me a job in a bar, I accepted on the spot. The salary would allow me to pay a nanny.”
According to data from the National Office of Statistics’ (ONS) latest employment surveys, it is mostly women who are in the lowest paid jobs.
Ever since, things started to go well for her, despite the precariousness of the job. She got used to the instability. She hadn’t even thought of asking her boss to declare her—not until the unexpected happened: in 2020, the restaurant that employed her had to shut down because of the COVID-19 health crisis. She considered going back to Setif, her hometown, but “transport between the wilayas was suspended, and I couldn’t make up my mind.” An old man agreed to help her out.
As the health situation started improving, S.D. went back to her job, but still without any social protection. She asked her boss to declare her, and he didn’t object. But she then realized that her salary, once the contributions were deducted, would no longer be enough for her. “I’m going to continue to make my way through all this. My son will take care of me later,” she hopes.
A paradoxical choice
Many women prefer not to be declared in order to have a higher salary—and it’s not an insignificant choice: according to data from the National Office of Statistics’ (ONS) latest employment surveys, it is mostly women who are in the lowest paid jobs. Others explain that they didn’t want to lose their deceased parents’ reversionary pensions, which the law only allows them access to as long as they are single and not declared as workers covered by social security. The high cost of living, inflation, and the succession of economic crises in the country have a double impact on women who, according to the ONS, only represent 20.4% of the active workforce in Algeria.
This is also the paradoxical choice made by Yasmina, a 40-year-old androgynous woman. She too chose to work without being declared or insured. “My problems actually started when I had to access the world of work. My appearance and how I dress pushed me to accept all the offers I got, even those that were against my convictions and that didn’t correspond to my profile or the training I’d done,” she says.
Her life started to get complicated as of the age of 24, when she decided to leave the family home because of problems with her father: “I had to rent a house and support myself on my own. I accepted the first job offer I got, but my employer discriminated against me and didn’t declare me as an employee. He knew what my situation was, and he took advantage of it.”
The “Women in Numbers – 2022” publication by the Center for Information and Documentation on the Rights of Children and Women (CIDDEF) [...] reveals that the unemployment rate among men is 9.1%, against 20.4% for women.
Years later, her father passed away, leaving her a monthly reversionary pension of 15,000 dinars, which doesn’t even amount to the average Algerian income per capita. Yasmina then “voluntarily” chose to work without being declared and also renounced her father’s pension. She describes how she often chose to keep quiet for fear of being fired and finding herself without any income. A plausible possibility in the absence of a real employment contract.
Today, at 40, Yasmina is still in a vulnerable situation. In addition to the exploitation to which she no longer even pays any attention, she also has to deal with derogatory remarks—like when a colleague started pushing her around. “A year ago, I was working in a workshop where I was doing more than the legal number of hours. One day, an employee who couldn’t stand my unfeminine appearance started bothering me. For no reason, he attacked me by calling me a “b…” I didn’t react at the time; I had to keep quiet once again for fear of being fired, but I later complained to the director—who didn’t care,” she laments, brushing away her tears.
The situation got worse the next day: the employee, still unpunished, attacked her again, this time physically beating her. No one intervened. “I fell to the ground. The director asked me to go home and not come back until he called me.” The next day, she, the party who was assaulted, received an SMS informing her that she’d been dismissed from her job. Her attacker was not fired.
“I wanted to file a complaint against my attacker and the workshop director, but I didn’t have an employment contract. The fact that I’m androgynous, or masculine, in appearance, as some say, has subjected me to exploitation from everyone. Soon I’ll be 40 and still without a pension.”
“I’m navigating my way through life.”
Amina R., 36 years old, has always had a very eventful life and lived in precarious conditions, even though she is a graduate of the Faculty of Law, Ben Aknoun in Algiers. “I have never refused work without a contract because I couldn’t find anything better,” she explains. “To practice in my field, I was required to have at least two or three years of experience. Ever since I graduated, I just consider myself a freelancer.”
“Working allows me to help my brothers out financially. When I can do this, they are calmer and put less pressure on me. It’s really a perfect deal for me because I like to take care of myself. I like to live, and when I don’t have any money, I can’t do anything,” says Amina, who knows perfectly well that the law requires any person who works to declare their work.
If she doesn't contact the labor inspectorate, it’s because she knows she neither has the time nor the energy for this kind of procedure, which risks being exceedingly long and has little chances of success.
Ghalia, 28 years old, still asks herself a lot of questions. She dreams of having her own home, but the only possible and affordable way to acquire a dwelling requires a legal work contract. For her, the best solution is to set up her own project. “My studies in mechanical engineering didn’t help me much, so I did a training in e-commerce. I want to work from home to reduce my daily expenses. I’m also a gifted seamstress and I’m very creative; I want to market my products myself online, and once I’ve made some headway, I’ll declare myself,” she says.
Ghalia talks a lot about the internet and the messages she receives on LinkedIn and by email. She shows us some of these, in which “looking for a sexy woman” shows up twice. Responding to these comments on social media, on job offer pages, she fumes: “I don’t understand all these guys who think they're unemployed because of women! They don’t know we’re struggling just as much!”
Vulnerable and exploited, and also victims of gender-based discrimination, migrant women systematically find themselves in the informal sector.
Female unemployment and statistics
Though not exhaustive, these examples speak to the precariousness in which many women are living. The “Women in Numbers – 2022” publication by the Center for Information and Documentation on the Rights of Children and Women (CIDDEF), which takes up the figures of the last ONS study on unemployment, reveals that the unemployment rate among men is 9.1%, against 20.4% for women. It should also be noted that only people actively seeking work are considered unemployed—which means that housewives who do unpaid productive work are not counted.
Female employment is only at 17.6%. This household survey also measures undeclared work. We thus find that 42% of people who declare themselves to be working are not affiliated with social security. The results have not changed much since the 2006 anthropological study conducted at the national level, published in Algeria-Watch.
This study, carried out by the National Centre of Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the request of the Ministry of National Solidarity, Family, and Women's Affairs, revealed that approximately 70% of working women work in the informal sector. Migrant women should be added to these figures, as they are also left behind by statistics.
What are you talking about? I don’t even have any papers!
Aicha is a Cameroonian migrant who lives in Algeria. She is in her thirties.
We met her in a Moorish bath (hammam) in the Algiers mountains, where she “scrubs” female clients (kiassa, in Algerian dialect), gives massages, and cleans, along with four other migrant women, one of whom is still a minor. Aicha is a mother of three children. She explains having come to Algeria in hopes of being able to leave it one day and settle on the other side of the Mediterranean. Her irregular status has not allowed her to find any job other than cleaning or “El Kiassa in hammams,” enough to cover her day-to-day needs.
Would she like to have social insurance? She smiles, despite the heat and the fatigue visible on her face. “Insurance? What are you talking about? I don’t even have papers to prove my presence in Algeria. Finding a job is a miracle in itself. Should I negotiate and reject what’s offered to me? I’ve been working here for almost a year, more than eight hours a day. This is how I earn my living. When I have dinner, I don’t have lunch… and vice versa.”
Vulnerable and exploited, and also victims of gender-based discrimination, migrant women systematically find themselves in the informal sector. Their lot: cleaning, working in hammams, hair salons, and even sometimes popular markets.
“Insurance? What are you talking about? I don’t even have papers to prove my presence in Algeria. Finding a job is a miracle in itself.”
What the law says
According to the lawyer Yakouta Benrouguibi, a divisional employee at the National Social Insurance Fund, the law is clear with regard to informal work: “Employers are required to declare their employees, no matter their nationality, to social security, within a period not exceeding 10 days following their recruitment. Persons exercising a professional activity on their own behalf are also required to declare this to social security within a similar timeframe.”
Failure to comply with the law is subject to legal action. But complain to whom? “For us,” Aicha concludes, “being women in irregular situations is our destiny. The more we work, the less we earn. We have no rights; we have a duty: to work without ever complaining until we meet our Creator.”