AN Investigation on the Phenomenon of Women Vendors in Tehran's Metro

One of the major challenges facing managers and urban planners in the third millennium is increasingly development of informal economy. Tehran Metropolis is not an exception and it has witnessed a growing expansion of the informal economy, especially vendors in the subway over the last few decades. Accordingly, this paper aimed to review the theories and approaches about the phenomenon of street vending and then analyzed the passengers’ attitudes towards women vendors as well as the characteristics and reasons for its spread in subway cars using a survey based on semi-structured interview. The statistical population includes of two groups of traveler women and street vendors of Tehran metro line 1 and the sample size is 75 and 82 respectively. The results revealed that passengers are more willing to buy from Metro vendors. The major group age of metro’s vendors are young, educated, often immigrants, married and heads of households. The most important reason for this activity is inadequate capital and lack of jobs in the formal sector. The respond of managers and city officials is often based on legalistic approach, prohibiting, and preventing their activities. Finally, in order to organize vendors in metro, solutions including efficient and comprehensive spatial planning throughout the country, facilitating self-employment, development of special places for vendors, monitoring and controlling the quality of products, training and empowering, licensing activities in specific places and renting metro stalls to vendors have been presented.