The AFF is a neoliberal project which relies on gendered constructs of women entrepreneurial subjects and mischaracterizations of the informal market – it reproduces neoliberal economic aims via economic performativity.

The post-Washington consensus, a departure from the 1980s economic policies defined by structural adjustment programs, acknowledges that inclusive and sustainable development must address both social and economic dimensions (Stiglitz 1999). Increasing capabilities, especially women’s, is essential (Sen 1999). The emphasis on women’s empowerment (World Bank 2012) and unpaid care (UN Women 2015) reveal a shift from state- and market-dominated analyses to considering multidimensional aspects of global restructuring. However, the social turn remains grounded in economic thinking (Bergeron 2003). According to the World Bank’s 2012 World Development Report, gender equality is “smart economics” because it enhances productivity and improves outcomes for the next generation (World Bank 2012). Promoting women’s entrepreneurial abilities and increasing their market-based opportunities are key poverty reduction strategies to achieve these goals. This is reminiscent of past development strategies’ reliance on gendered constructs, such as the global market’s use of young women as docile, nimble, and cheap labor power (Elson and Pearson 1981) or the unequal burden placed on women as a result of structural adjustment policies (Acosta-Belén and Bose 1990; Benería and Feldman 1992). The gendered entrepreneurial subject is an example of what Bergeron (2011) describes as economic performativity, an economic description used to frame and normalize people’s actions. In this era of social development, economic performativity reproduces universalized notions of women, work, and the family to “transform subjectivities toward neoliberal aims” (Bergeron 2011, 154). For example, the construction of the Third World woman into the “rational economic woman” (Rankin 2001) assumes universal principles of entrepreneurship for women in developing countries (Radhakrishnan 2015). Meanwhile, state programs and programs led by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) continue to rely on women’s unpaid labor in the home and community while reinforcing neoliberal ideologies of self-sufficiency (Neumann 2013). This article is not a study on microcredit enterprises; however, I am in dialogue with critiques of development initiatives that rely on neoliberal entrepreneurialism to address social inequalities. The gendered entrepreneurial subject places responsibility on women while ignoring (and relying on) the decreased state support of social reproduction due to neoliberal restructuring (Bakker and Silvey 2008) and the increased informalization of the labor market (Breman 2013; Harriss-White 2003). I find that the World Bank’s framing of gender equality as an asset for productivity and the next generation and its emphasis on entrepreneurialism misrepresent women’s gendered experiences with the informal economy. Women experience informal work differently than men because of gendered constructs of work and care (Blumberg 2001), and while working at home would seem to lessen conflict between these roles, it intensifies and reinforces women’s social reproductive roles. This heightened burden challenges the World Bank’s stated goals for gender equality. The Informal Economy and Entrepreneurialism More than 84 percent of the nonagricultural workforce in India is in the informal economy (ILO 2013). Workers in the informal economy, work that is not recognized or protected by legal and regulatory frameworks, face a range of vulnerabilities, including “limited access to social protection, denial of labour rights, and lack of organization and representation” (ILO 2013, 1). Yet there is growing interest of the informal economy as a site for entrepreneurialism (see Thanh, Thi, and Turkina 2013; Webb et al. 2013; Williams and Gurtoo 2011; Williams and Nadin 2010). Building on De Soto’s (1989) argument of the informal economy as a response to state-imposed constraints in the formal labor market, informal workers are rational actors choosing to operate outside of formal regulations (Webb et al. 2013). Labor scholars have criticized this mischaracterization of informal work. They argue informal employment is the result of the unequal relations of production between workers and capital (Breman 2013; HarrissWhite 2003; Hill 2010). The informal economy is not a “safety net” (Singh, Jain-Chandra, and Mohommad 2012), nor is it an outcome of rational choice (Webb et al. 2013). Rather, it is a production relationship that relies on the downgrading and fragmentation of work for capital’s profit (Breman 2013). Karides (2010) links the micro-enterprise expansion under neoliberal development regimes to failures of past development strategies, relying on informal and unpaid labor to support the loss of formal work. Labeling informal work as an opportunity overlooks its cycle of pauperization (Breman 2013) and the social structures and relations that limit one’s “choice” of work (Harriss-White 2003; Hill 2010). For example, when women work, they are more likely to work in the informal economy (Chen and Raveendran 2011) and in segments of the informal labor force with the lowest earnings (Chen, Vanek, and Heintz 2006). The case of home-based workers, presented in the following pages, demonstrates the need for critical accounts of social relations of power in production and social reproduction to avoid misinterpreting informal workers’ needs.

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