CHILD WORKERS AND SCHOOLING
2.2 TYPES OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES AND REMUNERATION OFCRILDREN
The situation for South African children appears to be worsening, as evidenced by increasing rates and the depth of child poverty. With the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic being felt at every level of society, children are experiencing even greater hardships than before (Griese, Meintjies, Croke& Chamberlain, 2003).
2.2 TYPES OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES AND REMUNERATION
working day of children. A study conducted in Bangladesh indicated that even young children under 7 years of age participate in this activity. In Brazil, a teenage girl is likely to take over domestic chores when there is a young child at home and the mother is working (DeGraff, Bilsborrow & Herrin, 1993;
Levenstein, 1996). Surrogate motherhood, with access to limited educational opportunities, falls under this category. They act as mothers of the children they care for. Surrogate motherhood is a direct response to the needs of mothers who may be the family's main breadwinner. Surrogate mothers are generally between 6 and 14 years of age, the skills they have acquired relate to their probable future roles as mothers and housekeepers, and are unlikely to enable them to improve their financial and educational circumstances. Lastly, a special type of child- minding is emerging where children are paid for taking other younger children to school. A study conducted in South Africa indicates that some older children have a duty to take children of primary school age to school in the morning and to bring them back to their home in the afternoon (Moerehead, 1987).
2.2.2Non-Domestic Work
This category of work is a major form of activity in subsistence economies and encompasses farm work in rural areas. Time-use surveys have suggested that in agrarian economies children spend a great deal of time in such activities, particularly those that are highly time-intensive, such as tending livestock, protecting crops from birds and animals, weeding, and other tasks (Rogers &
Standing, 1981). In some activities such as herding cattle, certain ages are stipulated for commencing an activity. In Lesotho, for instance, boys are supposed to be older than lO years before herding cattle (Ministry of Employment and Labour, 2005). A child may be working for him/herself or for a parent or with parents of kin (e.g. as a foster child), or for strangers.
2.2.3 Marginal Economic Activities
This third category includes both legal and illegal activities, such as selling newspapers, looking after cars, shoe-shining, selling sweets and other small items, running errands, and sorting of garbage (Rogers & Standing, 1981). Theft, prostitution, and other activities, which are illegal, tend to fall in a similar category. Prostitution is also widely regarded as socially acceptable and even a relatively well-paid form of work. There are different types of prostitution in South Africa. There are those who work for drugs, those who work for a salary, and there are tertiary learners who maintain multiple boyfriends to pay for their cell-phones, bills, and charge accounts. About 40000 children are believed to be involved in prostitution in South Africa (Richter, Dawes & Higson-Smith, 2004).
2.2.4 Family Enterprises
Both male and female children may operate as unpaid workers in family enterprises. Rag picking, handcrafts, sweet-making, beer-brewing, prostitution, the production of and dealing with illegal drugs, and even stealing for re-sale, are examples of home-based family businesses which utilise children. Though carried out in a family environment, some of these activities may be detrimental to the children's future. In South Africa, this category includes a type of hairdressing called braiding. These are seen as important survival skills being passed from generation to generation by mothers or female relatives to girls in some poor families. They work from home as the following passage (Majola 2001) explains:
In their home in Diepkloof, Soweto, every person in the 26-member family is skilled in the art of plaiting hair and they all share the three bed roomed house, including a one-room shack outside. On busy days like Saturday all the women have their hands full of hair. Even the youngest of the grandchildren, Tsidi, on reprieve from studying for Grade 12, has a customer to take care of (Mail& Guardian, August 24-30,2001).
2.2.5 Working Children and their Earnings
Results from a survey (Myers, 1989) of urban working children in Cochabambe in Bolivia indicate that children are poorly paid. They earn less than adults even when performing the same work as adults (Bequele & Boyden, 1988). In Cairo, working children are sometimes paid one sixth of the normal wages (Daily News, 2001). In West and Central Africa, desperately poor parents are sometimes willing to give up their children for as little as 14 dollars (about R120) to smuggling rings that promise to educate them and find them jobs (Sunday Tribune, 2001). Prostitution offered an income of around 500 rupees (US $16.06) per month in 1990 in India (Blanc, 1994). In contract farming in India they are paid 10 rupees per 25kg cotton for de-linting (the separation of cotton from seeds) and 0.05 rupee per pest or worm caught (Sing, 1990). Children's earnings in Bolivia make a substantial contribution to household well-being, contributing an average earning enough to pull one family member above the poverty line of about 220 Bolivians a month (World Bank, 1996; Siddiqi& Patrinos, 1995).
Gender discrimination is also evident as girls earn less than boys. In part-time domestic work, which is remunerated, girls automatically hand over their earnings to parents. In instances where girls live-in as domestic workers, the money they earn is sent to their parents. Boys on the other hand keep their earnings. Working boys in India, for example, kept 17 to 33% of their earnings for themselves (Blanc, 1994). Girls are expected to have a higher sense of filial duty and obligation towards their households than boys are expected to in most societies.
While boys progressively explore wage-paid work in different fields, girls were more likely to remain entrapped in unpaid domestic work. By adolescence, and usually after reaching the age of 16, boys have moved, for example, from vending into other occupations.
In many cases, parents, step-parents, grand-parents or other relatives, care-giving adults, exploit children since they depend on them emotionally and economically.
Children work for such people without any payment. An illustration of this is the case of a girl who was given a home by a female teacher (Rogers & Standing, 1981). The teacher gave the girl boarding, lodging, clothing, and most importantly, access to centres of formal education, in exchange for housework, which the teacher herself could not do because she was physically handicapped.
Many children give related adults their earnings after working in the informal sector (Ennew, 1985; ILO, 1982). To add to this, in some instances, children have to account for their earnings to unscrupulous businessmen who exploit them (Rogers & Standing, 1981).
2.3 THE IMPACT OF CHILD WORK ON ACADEMIC