Everyday learning of women street vendors in urban Nepal: selling “Pani puri” for economic independence

Existing studies highlight the livelihood challenges, precarious working conditions, and coping strategies among women street food vendors, but they rarely examine how their everyday gendered learning processes reconstruct their identities that challenge patriarchal and structural barriers. Therefore, this study addresses this gap by exploring gendered everyday learning through an intrinsic case study of nine women street food vendors in urban Nepal (aged 28–62), using eight months of participant observation and unstructured in-depth interviews. The study reveals how these women’s everyday learning enabled them to become subsistence entrepreneurs by employing strategies such as negotiating with patriarchal structures, leveraging social networks, and developing innovative entrepreneurial skills. In addition, their learning narratives reveal not mere survival strategies, but active lifelong learning processes of identity reconstruction, empowerment, and economic resilience within feminized informal economies. Therefore, this study advances the gendered everyday learning perspective beyond individualized struggles in precarious work conditions and situates it within broader societal inequalities. The findings suggest the need to acknowledge and institutionalize these women’s everyday learning systems for developing policies that transform subsistence entrepreneurship into sustainable economic independence.