Several scholars have documented the significant challenges that market women traders in Africa face, as they operate in the informal economy. These challenges include facing periodic fires and floods and having to operate in unsafe physical and healthy environments. While these challenges are unquestionably substantial and numerous, a review of the literature shows the lack of a comprehensive conceptual framework that encapsulates all these myriad challenges that the market women traders face. To undertake the challenge of creating such an all-embracing framework, we build on intersectionality theory. We develop a framework from a “JOLT” perspective using a well-developed research stream that focuses on environmental jolts. Conceptualizing the issues that the market women face in terms of jolts rather than “challenges” and “problems” more fully captures and reflects the magnitude and the associated trauma that these women face. We review the jolts literature and the creates of a typology of jolts that market women in Ghana face. Finally, we will extend intersectionality theory with the jolts typology we have created and highlight its implications for theory, research, and practice.