Informality, entrepreneurship and female empowerment. Popular economy and paradoxes of direct sales in the south of Quito (Ecuador)

Abstract

This article analyzes the paradoxes that operate when the business discourse in the direct sales sector is interwoven with the practice of those who commercialize the products of these companies in a popular neighborhood environment. Starting from a discussion on informality, entrepreneurship and empowerment, and assuming the focus on the popular economy from a gender perspective and from a Latin American anthropological historical approach, we analyze how the sale activity takes root and is appropriated in the territory through the social relations of family and neighborhood. Based on a qualitative methodology with observation of the activity and interviews with vendors in the area of ​​Martha Bucaram, south of Quito, the text examines the way in which women face and maneuver in this activity. Entrepreneurial discourse popularizes their self-perception as entrepreneurs and empowered women, developing the desire for independence, the desire to "work" and leave the role of housewives, the management of consumption and credit and the ability to weave bonds and forms of knowledge and cooperation. Women find ways to make sense of and manage sales with and against this predicament by composing their own senses and practices aimed at guaranteeing reproduction.