formal sector. Furthermore, a decrease in welfare policies has also encouraged unemployment. Both of these factors have led to a growth in the informal sector of the U.S. economy, raising the number of women who work in this sector. This has caused an influx of women into drug markets. The drug economy as an equalizer The presence of women in drug markets has prompted sociologists, criminologists, and anthropologists to discuss the role of women in these markets. Do they hold positions in the drug economy that are liberated from mainstream society's gender inequality, or does society's sexism reproduce itself in the drug economy? Anthropologist Phillippe Bourgois, in an ethnography of the crack market in Spanish Harlem, states that the presence of women on the streets and in the crack market illustrates their emancipation from household labor and childcare. They are free to participate in street life. According to Natasha Du Rose, Wilson (1993) makes the argument that women's crime and drug use are rising to match men's because of women's emancipation. Du Rose quotes Fagan as saying that women's positions in the drug economy are high-status enough that prostitution plays a “relatively insignificant” part in generating income for these women. The drug economy perpetuating inequalities While Bourgois in 1989 states that women are free to take part in the drug trade now that they have been liberated from being wives and mothers, he qualifies this by saying that “traditional gender relations still govern income-generating strategies in the underground economy”. His ethnographic research shows that the majority of women in the Spanish Harlem crack market become sex workers to support their addictions. While women participate more in the drug economy, they still are forced into traditional street roles when they need to generate income. Sociologists Lisa Maher and Kathleen Daly in 1996 performed an ethnographic study of women in the Bushwick drug market in Brooklyn. They used a combination of participant observation fieldwork and interviews with the women and found that, in a highly hierarchical drug market, women occupy the lowest rungs of the market. “Owners”, who all happen to be men, employ “managers” who control a number of regular and casual “sellers”. These sellers in turn employ “runners”, “steerers”, and “coppers”, who supply the sellers, advertise their brand of drugs, or buy drugs for other customers. The runners, steerers, coppers, and casual sellers occupy the lowest-power and lowest-income positions of