A cultural revolution is underway in
Bangladesh. Middle class women, who traditionally stayed home after marriage,
despite their much higher level of education, have been entering the labor
force in unprecedented numbers since the mid-2000s. And poor women from the
countryside are staying in school longer and aspiring not only to a job in garments,
but also to a position as a driver, a police woman, or a garments supervisor. by Marianne Scholte
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| Female line supervisors in a garment factory |
Millions of young
Bangladeshi women have moved, often on their own, from the rural villages of
Bangladesh to the cities of Dhaka or Chittagong to take up a job in a garment
factory. The work is repetitive, the hours are long, pay is low, and safety
standards are at times hopelessly substandard, but these jobs have brought a
generation of Bangladeshi women economic and social independence that their
mothers and grandmothers never dreamt was possible.
Women have never enjoyed much status in Bangladeshi society. Girls are viewed as an economic drain on their families and are thus quickly married off, many before the onset of puberty, well over half before the age of 18. To arrange the marriage, the majority of families see themselves obliged to provide a dowry to the groom’s family.
Before and after marriage, the institution of purdah restricts women’s participation in public life and paid work, as well as their mobility. Particularly in the rural areas, women are often confined to the domestic sphere; many women do not even feel comfortable shopping in the public markets and may be subject to harassment if they do so. Domestic violence is common in Bangladesh, motivated primarily though not exclusively by dowry disputes. Bangladesh also holds the dubious distinction of being the country with the greatest reported incidence of acid violence in the world.
Things have slowly
been changing for Bangladeshi women since the country was founded in 1971. The country’s
now famous NGOs have focused their work on women, given women a legitimate
reason to leave their homes, and sanctioned their micro-credit-based economic
activity. The country’s highly
successful family planning program allowed Bangladeshi women to plan their
pregnancies and also provided highly visible and “respectable” jobs for women
in the rural areas with at least a secondary education.
But it has
been the country’s readymade garment (RMG) industry that has brought about the
most profound and far-reaching changes for Bangladeshi women. The vast majority
of the over 3.5 million jobs provided by the sector are filled by women – the
majority, poor rural women for whom there were no formal sector jobs previously.
Garments give rural women the means to
support their parents and children
The economic
security of a Bangladeshi family used to dependent entirely on its male
members. Young girls were married off quickly, in part to relieve their
families of the financial burden of supporting them. However, today a high percentage
of garment workers send part of their income to the countryside to support
their parents, siblings, and children; in some cases they are providing a home
for one or both of their parents. The fact that women can now earn a regular
salary and contribute to the family income has dramatically changed their
status in the family and earned them respect. The industry has also provided incentives for families to educate their girls
so that they can get a job; it has reduced the preference for sons.[1]
The RMG
industry has given women an expanded range of life choices compared to almost
all other women in the country: garment workers generally keep a part of their
income for their own use and are able to take decisions about their own health
care, the purchase of major assets, and their own clothes – something which may
seem trivial, but is in fact highly important to women the world over. Many
have a savings account or insurance policy in their own name. Garment workers generally
marry later, often choose their own husbands, and delay childbearing. Some
report that a job in a garment factory enabled them to leave an abusive
marriage.[2]
In fact,
studies by leading Bangladeshi social scientists have repeatedly found that
women working in the RMG sector “enjoy more benefits than [those in] most other
forms of waged work available to them” and are far more aware than all other
women in Bangladesh of their rights as workers. Women garment workers generally
report feeling bolder, more confident, and more comfortable moving about
unaccompanied in the public sphere.[3]
Simeen
Mahmud, Lead Researcher at the Centre for Gender and Social Transformation at
BRAC University in Dhaka, explains that the women who have migrated from the
countryside to the city and daily stream through the city streets to and from
work “have changed everything. They have legitimized women’s movement and made
it safer for all of us.”
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[1] Nidhi Khosla, “The ready-made garments industry in
Bangladesh: A means to reducing gender-based social exclusion of women?” Journal of International Women’s Studies,
Vol. 11#1, November 2009; Rachel Heath and Mushfiq Mobarak, “Supply and Demand
Constraints on Educational Investment: Evidence from Garment Sector Jobs and
the Female Stipend Program in Bangladesh,” New Haven, CT: Yale University,
2011.
[2] Naila Kabeer, Simeen Mahmud, and Sakiba Tasneem, Does Paid Work Provide a Pathway to Women’s
Empowerment? Empirical Findings from Bangladesh, BDI Working Paper #5,
Dhaka: BRAC Development Institute, October 2011; Khosla; interviews of garment
workers by the author, October 2012.
[3] Kabeer, Mahmud, and Tasneem; Khosla.
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