When thinking about going to some Markets around the city, I became interested in observing patterns of gender among various sections of the market. I assumed the people selling goods would be about half male and half female, but maybe separated some depending on which goods are being sold by that person. I planned on going to two separate markets and comparing themes of what men were selling as apposed to what female vendors were selling.
When arriving at the market, at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon, it quickly became clear that it was the time of day when most people, including many of the vendors, take an afternoon nap. There were very few people in the market overall, causing our group of American college students to stick out even more than usual. I did notice that in the fabric and clothing section of the market, which consisted of over 50 stalls, I did not see even one male vendor, or a male shopper. The only male in that part of the market was a small child around 3 years old. In the spice section I saw four male vendors, followed by three in the fish and meats section and two in the fruits section. out of the nine men working in the market at that particular moment I saw five of them sleeping, two of them teasing a women at the stall next to them about her poor English skills, and the other two either engaging with or waiting for customers.
At the second market the first thing I saw was a lady scaling a fairly large live fish, at the same time that a huge toad, who was tied to three other smaller toads, tried to hop away from the lady and into the street, where they caused several motorbikes to swerve around them. I became more interested in the live animal section and had a hard time focusing on my research question. This market was much larger than the first market, and seemed to have a lot more men working in all areas, all of whom were awake and working. I think the primary difference between behaviors in the two different markets was the time of day and size of the market. If I were to try to study this same question again I would go to more markets, at the same time, maybe in the morning, over several days to get a more accurate idea of what is going on. I would have also tried harder to not get distracted and would have narrowed my question down to something more specific.