Data is power: understanding the complexities of violence against women street vendors

Every year, from 25 November to 10 December, marks the 16 Days of Activism against gender based violence. On this occasion, we want to highlight the vulnerability that women street vendors and market traders endure economically, physically and psychologically, while joining hands for global actions to end violence against women.

Women constitute a majority of market and street vendors worldwide. Every day, we can see them at the marketplace and on the streets, making a living to support their families, and making a significant contribution to the local economy. According to data from the Street Vendors Barometer^[1], a participatory research led by StreetNet International with the Global Labour Institute (GLI), 64.2% of women vendors in Zimbabwe experience physical abuse from customers, with many reporting harassment and intimidation that jeopardise their safety and dignity. Some of the women are survivors of domestic abuse who turned to vending as a means of survival rather than choice. Gender specific economic precarity exacerbates their vulnerability, as only 7.8% of the women have maternity coverage, and most of them work long hours under insecure and exploitative conditions. Overall, vendors in Zimbabwe lack access to basic infrastructure. For one in five of them, the ground is their workplace with no shelter. Extreme weather has been disastrous for the incomes of these vendors, especially for those selling perishable goods like fresh food, fruits, vegetables or fish.

Meanwhile the survey found that 56.9% of women vendors in Argentina do not have access to toilets at their workplace, a problem that disproportionately affects women. Of those who have access to sanitation facilities, only 32.9% have access to gender-separated toilets, an invaluable source of safety and comfort for women vendors, posing concerns for their health and problems with menstruation. The survey also found that 40.9% women vendors face violence and harassment, frequently from police authorities and fellow vendors. From the findings, the lack of sanitary facilities, insecurity and extreme weather intensifies both economic and psychological stress, reinforcing women’s exposure to physical and emotional harm.

The data detailed above paints a grim reality, yet it might also help change it. The participatory research carried out by the Street Vendors Barometer is meant to visibilise and empower women vendors and market traders facing gender-based violence. Participatory research transforms women vendors from subjects of the research into equal partners of the process, which generates lived-based data to expose the gendered aspects of economic exclusion. It provides a practical organising tool, strengthening solidarity and uncovering shared experiences across countries.

The Street Vendor Barometer has confirmed two important issues faced by market and street vendors, particularly by women vendors: one is the fight against harassment and evictions of small traders; the other is the fight for social protections, such as access to health services and income security. And it has amplified the demands of women vendors for the right to formalise their work and to live free from violence. In this edition, we also share a case of how women from Uganda’s lakeshore communities showcased the influence of transforming data into compelling evidence to support women's engagement in policy debate and building solidarity to fight for just food systems.

Uganda’s lakes –Victoria, Albert, Kyoga, and Edward – sustain entire communities. Fishing provides food, income, and identity for thousands of families. Yet, despite being central to processing and trading fish, women in lakeside communities continue to face profound barriers that limit their access to markets and undermine their right to food.

In recent years, power in the Ugandan fisheries sector has shifted dramatically from local, small-scale producers and traders to corporate food system actors backed by militarised structures. What was once a decentralised system of community exchange is now increasingly governed by top-down controls. Women who previously moved freely between landing sites and markets now find themselves subject to layers of regulation, surveillance, and exclusion.

Women typically lack sufficient financial resources required to meet the new regulatory demands such as acquiring licenses and permits, transport documents, paying repeated landing-site fees, or meeting new standards for handling and packaging fish. At several landing sites where FIAN Uganda monitors the right to food situation, women report that these rules increasingly favour larger, male-dominated operators who can afford the required equipment and formal registration. In 2017, the army took over fisheries management and launched a terror campaign in the region. Traditional processing methods, especially fish smoking, have since stopped in many communities, even though smoking is essential for extending shelf life and enabling women to reach distant markets. Without access to such methods and unable to meet costly storage or transport requirements, many women are pushed into more precarious, informal channels where they face heightened risks.

One of the most pervasive threats to women fish vendors is harassment, both at landing sites and along transport routes. Women travelling to markets frequently face arbitrary arrests, extortion, or confiscation of their fish by police. Several women describe waking up at dawn only to be stopped on the road, where they are accused of transporting immature fish or forced to pay bribes to proceed.

These obstacles contribute to a profound lack of visibility for women in fishing communities. Despite playing essential roles in feeding households and supplying local markets with affordable and nutritious food, their contributions are rarely recognised in policy discussions or local food governance structures. This invisibility deepens their exclusion and weakens community food systems that depend on their labour.

To push back against this invisibility, women in several communities are working with FIAN Uganda to document their experiences through participatory monitoring. These tools allow women to record instances of harassment, lost income, or market exclusion in real time - turning their lived experiences into data. This grassroots data collection on rights violations is not just an information exercise: it is a political act, asserting women’s right to be seen, heard, and counted in policy decisions that shape their livelihoods.

Women have also formed informal cooperatives to strengthen their bargaining power. These groups pool resources to purchase fish collectively, share information on safe transport routes, and provide mutual support when members face harassment or confiscations.

Across fishing communities, women are also building collective power to defend their rights. In Bussi landing site, on Lake Victoria, following intensive human rights trainings, local women launched a grassroots advocacy movement to speak out against violations and demand fair access to markets. In other communities, women are using theatre to raise awareness about harassment, abusive law enforcement actions, and the impacts of restrictive policies on their livelihoods, and have formed local savings groups to help navigate unpredictable financial pressures and strengthen their bargaining position.

These women have documented rights violations and engaged local leaders through community dialogues. Their organising has yielded concrete results: women’s representatives successfully met with members of parliament several times to raise concerns about the brutality of army-led enforcement in the fisheries sector. They have also participated in national-level dialogues that brought together key ministries and other actors when, in September 2024 the government halted the mukene fishing method, in which silverfish is caught using light. These efforts show how women are not only resisting harmful practices but shaping policies that affect their communities.

The struggles of Uganda’s women in fishing communities reflect broader questions at the heart of food sovereignty: Who controls food systems? Who benefits from natural resources? And whose knowledge and labour are valued? Gender inequality, market exclusion, and shrinking access to natural resources are interconnected realities that shape the daily lives of these women and have profound impacts on their and their communities' right to food.

In November 2025, the CEO of HKTV Mall announced that it would invest US$320,000 to expand its online sales platform in Hong Kong and join hands with Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba, PDD and JD “to eradicate the city’s physical economy”. The company was established five years ago during the peak of COVID, and has since grown into the biggest e-supermarket in Hong Kong with over 1.5 million members.

Fortunately, Hong Kong farmers and consumers have been pursuing a very different trajectory from these e-commerce giants in responding to the disruption of fresh food supply that occurred during the COVID-19 outbreak. They are organising a local vegetable supply system that is quietly reshaping Hong Kong’s urban fabric, through a patchwork of intimate and community-based alliances.

Local grocery stores, for instance, have started offering a more diverse selection of local food products. There is also an increasing number of cafés and restaurants that curate seasonal menus and events with locally sourced ingredients. Agri-food workshops, like Organic Greenfield (Tin Yeah) and Forest Living HK, promote fresh farm produce by engaging communities in cooking, reading, and sharing activities for agri-food education.

Cultural venues such as independent bookshop Book Punch connect readers and growers through themed events, and give out fresh vegetables to book lovers. More institutionalised units like the School of Everyday Life, Viva Blue House and Tai Kwun invite farmers to their holiday markets. Malls including Airside, The Mills, and Lee Garden also open their high-footfall zones for regular farmers’ markets.

Organisers of pop-up weekend markets and events often recruit stallholders through personal networks or social media calls. Long-term initiatives, however, require experienced coordinators with a deeper understanding of agronomy and fair market practices to negotiate between farmers and venue managers. A prior farm-to-table campaign, The Lee Gardens Urban Farmers’ Market, run by Sustainable Ecological Ethical Development Foundation, was a prime example that addressed seasonal factors and farmers’ realities.

Noticeably, the presence of local vegetables in Hong Kong’s urban spaces is a coordinated movement of actors from different sectors. Recently, more local stores have joined collective buying campaigns by offering space for vegetable pickup, which helps to reduce logistics costs and inputs. These shops often buy extra vegetables and sell them to walk-in customers across the city.

At the heart of this movement are small businesses and community networks providing modest but meaningful spaces for local produce. Small shops, which offer more flexible and fair terms compared to hegemonic e-commerce platforms, create a new space for local smallholding farmers to thrive. Many of them maintain close-knit, long-term customer ties within the districts, which foster trust and loyalty. These relationships catalyse pre-orders and vegetable box schemes, ensuring farmers have predictable markets and reliable income. The intersections between fresh produce, cultural values, and contemporary urban themes—such as self-care, green living and handmade aesthetics—signal a growing desire among urban dwellers to reconnect with craftmanship, the environment, and community.

In the face of e-commerce imperialism, people in Hong Kong are managing to advance a closed-circuit self-sufficient supply, while building a food sovereignty movement with small farmers who embrace community connection to food, agriculture and land.

-Elise Yan Zeng (Independent researcher, rural and agricultural activist)

[1] Street Vendors Barometer is a participatory research project, conducted by Global Labour Institute (GLI), and two of StreetNet’s affiliates: UTEP in Argentina and ZCIEA in Zimbabwe.