The Lived Experience of Girls Working on the Street in the Context of Gender Considerations and Ethnic Differences

The phenomenon of  labor children is one of the social problems that has attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years. However, in many cases, the female children of labor having been neglected. In the present paper, it has been attempted to investigate the lived experience of female children of labor using a qualitative research method and conducting phenomenological studies. To this end, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 23 girls of 6 to 16 years of age who had the lived experience of both working and living on the street. The research findings show that the girls’ perception and description of work on the street and the understanding of their narratives can be categorized into four main themes: “Contextual and ethnic characteristics”, “Typology of daily activities based on gender”, “Spatial domains of work”, and “Skills and techniques”. The research findings also show that the backgrounds and contexts of girls’ work on the street can be categorized into the following four categories: “Living in disintegrated families”, “Poverty and helplessness”, “Girls’ labor as support for the family”, and “The double exploitation and strict control of female children of labor”.