Introduction The women whose story is told in this book are those who conducted trade in at least one of the SADC countries during the period.
The book is about how the women managed to capture the cross-border market niche, and how they had successfully appropriated that market niche to their advantage. How and where women traders source their merchandise, and how they access markets and strategise for success is discussed. The way the women cross-border traders are developing informal trading networks based on new ties and connections far away from home is also discussed.
An in-depth study of a purposively selected group of Zimbabwean women traders based in Harare, the capital city, and Chinhoyi, a provincial city, was the focal point for the study, which had a regional emphasis. A Summary of Findings Over the past two decades Zimbabwean informal cross-border trade had become a strategy that enabled some previously poor women and not so well off people to climb out of poverty.
It had become an avenue that enabled many women to support themselves and their families. It was through this highly gendered cross-border trade that many women in the study were able to fulfil their domestic responsibilities. Women cross-border traders strategise for success and seek to maximise returns from their investment in the cross-border market niche. Most cross-border women traders adopted a multiplicity of strategies in order to boost their income earning capacity. The women embraced strategies that enabled them not only to cope with poverty but, in many ways, to escape, invest and climb out of poverty.
The concern for the women traders was survival in an economy where nothing is free. In many instances cross-border trade meant being away from the family on extended periods each month. A new family form, notably the commuter household, was emerging as the dominant family form for this group of women. Success in cross-border trade depended on the development of interpersonal trans-border business connections.
