EMEEQUIS.– It is delivery day at seven points. At the wheel, Ixchel Mendoza begins her work day as "neni", a way of naming women who, with sales through digital networks, resist the feminization of unemployment and job insecurity in Mexico.

Ixchel is 32 years old and she started in this business in Oaxaca seven years ago. With the pandemic, she has watched the number of women in this informal economy increase. "If before we were a hundred, in a short time we were already 500," she says.

“Neni” derives from the way they call their clients. Initially, the word had a derogatory connotation, but the women claimed the term New Internet Business Entrepreneur (NENI).

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Ixchel has two children and sells shoes and clothes. For five years since she separated from her partner, she fully assumed her upbringing and support. "I really live off this, it's not my extra income, it's my livelihood," she explains. She admits that informality has been the only way she has been able to combine work with taking care of her children, especially now that they are home due to online classes.

A review of microdata with the help of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), which carries out the National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE) , reveals that, like Ixchel, as of the second quarter of 2021 in the country there are 2 million 179 thousand 689 women aged 15 and over who are self-employed, informal workers in the commercial sector.

The microdata review shows that the states with a higher percentage of these women are Guerrero (15%), Oaxaca (13.6%) and Veracruz (13.6%). These two entities are followed by Chiapas (12.9%) and, on the contrary, those with the lowest concentration are Aguascalientes (5.2%), Baja California Sur (5.9%), Colima and Querétaro (6.0%).

Ixchel had the idea of ​​uniting as many women as possible to promote solidarity economy. In coordination with two other friends, in January of this year she created the Plaza Nenis Oaxaca Oficial Facebook group, which has more than 7,500 members, of which 200 sell and the rest are consumers. “We are clear that together we can do many more things than envying each other; and we are teaming up exploiting technological tools”.

On the other hand, Ixchel adds that for other women, having their own money has allowed them to get out of relationships or marriages where they were violated.

“It has empowered many of us to get ahead; say yes I can support my children, yes I can take them to school, yes I can be with them, buy something, treat myself”.

Among the wide variety of products that the "nenis" sell are all kinds of handicrafts, clothing, beauty and electronic items, clothing and figures woven by themselves, food, pastries, decorative items for the house, and aromatic candles, among others. other things.

An International Labor Organization (ILO) report published in July 2021 indicates that more than a year and a half after entering the COVID-19 pandemic, gender equality in the world of work has worsened.

“Women have suffered disproportionate job and income losses, also due to their over-representation in the most affected sectors, and many continue to work on the front lines, sustaining care systems, economies and societies and often also doing most of the work. unpaid care work. All these factors accentuate the need for the recovery to take into account the gender perspective in order to respond to the commitment to advance in the reconstruction with more equity”.

As a consequence of the pandemic, 4.2% of women's employment was destroyed, compared to 3% in the case of men, according to the report.

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Yessenia Rodríguez, Ariadna García and Ixchel Mendoza Rosales, founders of Plaza Nenis Oaxaca Oficial. Photo: Courtesy.

UNMASK UNEMPLOYMENT AND INFORMALITY

Alma Dulce García, a feminist sociologist specializing in families and violence prevention at the Autonomous University of Querétaro, recognizes how women formed support networks to financially support their homes. "Now it's even become a question of empowerment," she says.

But García warns that the risk is to romanticize unemployment disguised as entrepreneurship. “For the State it is very easy to say 'everyone becomes an entrepreneur and I don't create jobs'”.

Carmen Ponce, a specialist in finance and gender, points out that the "nenis" reflect the job insecurity experienced by women in Mexico, now exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. "They are unemployed people who what they do is look for a way to survive, who look for a way not to starve."

Without detracting from the economic contribution of this sector of women, the also author of the column El Monedero in the CIMAC news agency, points out that considering them entrepreneurs prevents the authorities from taking responsibility for the problem. "We have to unmask the problem and stop using the elegant word of entrepreneurs because it is false and hollow," she points out.

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Carmen Ponce agrees with Alma Dulce García, who asserts that there must be public policies and labor reforms that guarantee them decent jobs, fixed salaries, the possibility of having medical insurance, access to childcare, retirement, protection against work risks, access to credit and insurance. of unemployment; however, she acknowledges how women formed support networks to financially support their households.

Senator Patricia Mercado, a member of the Labor and Social Welfare Commission, also adds the importance of the creation of the National Care System, for which there is already a legislative proposal pending. “Informal work is not the one that does not pay taxes, it is the one that does not have rights. The women are there and they are falling more because they do not finish leaving the confinement because the girls and boys have not finished going back to school and there is no type of support for them.

Guerrero is where this form of informal work for women is mostly found.

The legislator begins by making the problem visible. She believes that the fact that women make sales and deliveries in their spare time because they are reconciling caregiving tasks should be addressed. “The great challenge that lies ahead is to turn these informal jobs into jobs with rights. This is what we have to resolve comprehensively so that these jobs are done in the best conditions in terms of rights and that is not to reconcile unpaid workdays with paid workdays in these free times.

Order day ends for Ixchel Mendoza. Her clients in her Facebook group are already asking her where in Oaxaca, the second entity with the largest presence of "nenis" in Mexico, she delivers the products she sells.

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