The Dark shadow of Glitz: Botswana Supermarkets and the Plight of Women

This study explores the working conditions of employees in Botswana chain store giant super markets. The advent of retail business and its boom is considered in part, as boosting Botswana’s economic growth and prosperity; more especially as a provision of the much needed employment opportunities to ameliorate rising poverty. The paper has three major sections. The first section gives an overview of supermarket business in the Botswana context and reviews the related literature. The second part presents the methodologies adopted whilst the third part discusses the findings. The dark-shadow of these glittering giant food chain supermarkets is their failure to recognize the centrality of motivated human resources and accordingly reward them decently to boost productivity. As a result of this lack of appreciation the needs of their workforce, Botswana supermarkets have created the poor working class, mainly young unqualified women with no tertiary education, who struggle to meet the rising cost of living because of poor pay and bad working conditions. The study is limited in terms of sample size; it is a case study on three major supermarkets in Botswana. The findings in the paper could benefit policy makers, retail stores managers and other stakeholders directly or indirectly affected by retail business. The paper reveals some of the challenges faced by young adults employed in supermarkets.