Women working in the Readymade Garment Industry in Bangladesh [Dis]Empowered?
Kamrun Nahar, Shahinur Tania, Sadika Haque and Deepa Joshi.
Background and Context Women make for 80 per cent of the four million people working in Bangladesh’s Ready Made Garment (RMG) industry. The opportunity of paid work in the RMG industry is said to have empowered poor women in Bangladesh (WEF, 2020). It is claimed that formal paid work for large numbers of women has helped break down cultural barriers to women’s mobility and changed deep-rooted cultural perceptions that women cannot or should not earn income (Kabeer, 2001). The mobility and income in turn, is said to enable women RMG workers to negotiate their social standing both within and outside their households (Hossain, 2012). However, the RMG industry, a key contributor to the national economy - is noted to be driven mostly by goals of profit maximization (Rehman, 2018; Islam, 2016). Does poorly paid work for marginalized women offer scope for their economic and personal wellbeing? Globally, women are noted to experience increasing responsibilities for productive work even as their domestic burdens persist and women seem largely unable to negotiate these dual work burdens (Chant, 2016).
In analysing these narratives by researchers and experts, we noted that the views and voices of the women RMG workers, themselves, remain largely unknown. Guided by a participatory research approach which did not emphasise a predetermined research agenda, we met and spoke to some 30 women and their families who work in RMG factories in Bhadam, a neighbourhood in Tongi Upazila in Gazipur district. Gazipur, a peri-urban suburb of Dhaka metropolitian city is the heartland of Bangladesh’s RMG industry. In 2017 and 2018, we lived in Bhadam alongside the RMG workers for over eight months, and at their convenience, listened to, observe at close the everyday work and life experiences of these women. Annex 1 gives an overview of how women experience paid work in the factories and their everyday lives at homes. Working together with the street theatre group, Bot Tala, we facilitated a deeper reflection on the stories that the women shared to co-create a theatre play which can be viewed here.
Key Findings Paid work and income is important for poor women, but women RMG workers do not earn “living wages” and their conditions of work are not “decent”. On average, women RMG workers earn 8000-10000 BDT (95-120 USD) for over eight hours of work, six days a week. Work is laborious and unregulated, paid on performance and offers no maternity or sick leave. There are no work contracts, little scope for career advancement and no postwork benefits/ entitlement. Workers have short shelf lives, are replaced by younger workers in less than ten years. Wages are earned, but there is little flexible income to spend on personal health and wellbeing, or to save. Economic and emotional distress, which are key push factors for poor women entering the workforce, persists regardless of the tenure of work. Just to set the context, during COVID19, there is widespread report from Bangladesh of workers being made redundant and wages not paid since the government announced shutdown. Almost a third of the wages earned are paid for housing, water and sanitation, which is far from appropriate. This impacts the well being as well as economic empowerment of women RMG workers: Rent for one room dwellings in small enclosed compounds with one to two bathing, toilet and kitchen spaces shared between 15-25 families – is equivalent to a third of the wages earned for RMG work. Water is scarce, controlled by the landlord who might be living in the premise, and often an issue of conflict. Inadequate basic services, skewed relations with male landlords and labourious long working hours combine to cause inconvenience, stress, anxiety and indignity on a daily basis for women RMG workers.
Women’s paid work impacts on the rights of the child: In Bhadam, which has over 25 factories and some 500 worker families, there are no banks, no schools, no hospitals, medical doctors, clinics – public or private, within a ten kilometer radius. Inflexible work conditions and challenging living environment force women working in the RMG industry to leave very young children in the villages from where they migrated. Children as young as three to four years living in Bhadam are left unsupervised in the densely packed settlements. Absence from work due to personal or children’s illness results in loss of daily wages and longer absences can result in the termination of work. The daily or long-term separation from young children and the inability to ensure better care and upkeep of the children is a cause of deep anxiety for the women RMG workers. Women’s increased mobility and paid work impacts gender relations negatively: Men whose wives work alongside other men in the factories were seen to emphasize their masculinity by controlling their wives’ incomes and forcing them to be compliant housewives. Working women rely on elderly mothers (in-laws) or young daughters, sometimes six to seven years, to share domestic responsibilities, including child care. Even when they are the primary contributors to the household income, women are rarely able to challenge or change masculine prejudices and privileges. The women not only experience onerous physical burdens, but also significant emotional challenges. The RMG industry has a significant environmental foot-print, which affects most workers and their families living in the vicinity of the factories: Unregulated effluent discharge from the factories which pollutes surface and ground water impacts most the locals, who rely on shallow ground water for drinking and domestic use and food grown locally.
Policy Recommendations Poorly paid work for poor women in RMG factories results in increasing productive and reproductive work responsibilities for women in situations where both work and living arrangements pose numerous challenges. The relative inability to negotiate gendered roles and responsibilities impacts most a growing generation of children, especially young girls, who forego all the rights of the child. Women’s mobility and income seems to reiterate rather than transform cultures of masculinity. In situations of poorly paid work, there is little empowerment of women, not even economic empowerment (Fukuda-Parr, 2016). Trapped by persisting domestic responsibilities and increasing economic obligations, women have little ability to negotiate hardships at home and at work (Chant, 2016).
Reversing this situation will require concerted action on three foundational issues: • Ensuring decent work conditions and living wages for all workers in the RMG industry • Making housing, water supply and sanitation, child and maternal healthcare affordable and more easily accessible for RMG workers • Building safeguards to improve women’s control and decision-making on wages earned and supporting them to tackle unequal gender-power relations
Acknowledgements: The design for this research emerged out of a scoping study that was supported by the project, ‘Climate Policy, Conflicts and Cooperation in Peri-Urban South Asia: Towards Resilient and Water Secure Communities’ in the framework of the programme Conflict and Cooperation in the Management of Climate Change (CCMCC) funded by NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) and DFID (UK Department For International Development). The research findings presented here in this paper are from the REACH programme funded by UK Aid from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) for the benefit of developing countries (Aries Code 201880). However, the views expressed and information contained in it are not necessarily those of or endorsed by DFID, which can accept no responsibility for such views or information or for any reliance placed on them. The research team thank Tina Wallace and Jasber Singh for their inputs to this policy brief. We acknowledge with deep gratitude the women who work in the RMG factories for giving us their time and sharing their experiences. Research Team: Kamrun Nahar, Shahinur Tania, Sadika Haque and Deepa Joshi. Photo credits: Sadika Haque
Annex 1: Voices from below Work in the RMG factories is not aspirational: Amina Akhter and her husband migrated to Dhaka. After days of struggling to find a job, they came down to selling all their belongings, including their cooking utensils. At this point, Amina requested her husband, to give her permission to search for a job in the garments (RMG) factory. According to her, ‘He was strongly against it, he said, only bad women work in the factory. I was able to understand his feelings. I made him ensure that I would ensure that I would be very careful, to not let him down’. RMG women workers struggle to work as well keep their husbands satisfied: Devi Khatun’s husband is addicted to Yaba, a mix of methamphetamine and caffeine, a cheap drug of choice locally. She returns home tired from work everyday to an intoxicated husband, who gets, ‘very angry and beats me up for nothing. This then makes him excited and he wants me to comply with his [sexual] demands’.
On getting home exhausted, I found our room in a terrible mess. I cannot ever imagine that he will cook food for me. But, I found that he had not even washed his lungi (body wrap used by men) after taking a bath – even though I knew he was at home since the afternoon. I washed that so late at night, because he needs it for work the next day and if it is not clean or dry, he will beat me. Actually I cannot express my feelings at that moment. I just blame my fate for such a husband’. Childcare is a huge emotional and financial burden on women: Shila lives with her husband in Bhadam, and sends a part of her salary to her mother-in-law, who cares for her daughter, she has left back in the village. She is only able to see her first born once a year, during Eid – she says, ‘Every night, I remember my child so much and cry. I wish I could be a bird and fly each evening to my daughter’.
Sabiha’s husband works in the same RMG factory as her, and has ‘extramarital relationship with other girls’ which he does not even try to hide. ‘This pain and loss of face in front of others is more painful for a woman than a beating (by the husband). I try(ied) so hard to make things work for my family, but in reality, I have lost everything in my life. I feel burnt out from the inside because of my husband’s behaviour. To me, the problems of living arrangements, house, water, toilets are nothing compared to the inner unrest that I experience inside’.
Amina Akhter worries deeply about leaving her three daughters, aged, nine and six years and 18 months alone in the settlement each day. Her elder daughter is the caretaker of the younger two. ‘I cannot send them to school nor can I send any money to my parents. It is meaningless to work. My dream and hope for a better life when we left the village will never be achieved. I have no hope that I can escape this situation. Against my desire, I am now waiting for my daughters to grow up and take my place in the factories. This was not the life I want for them, but this is my only hope now’.
Regardless of how long they work, RMG workers are often in debt and have no savings:
Women’s work outside the home hurts men’s masculinities:
Amina Akhter, a single mother of three young girls lives in poverty and is asset-less ‘after nearly ten years of working. I could not save any money, even though I live a [frugal] difficult life. We don’t eat good food or wear good clothes, we live in a small room and do not even have a bed. I worry about my three daughters – aged, nine and six years and 18 months. I cannot send them to school nor can I send any money to my parents. As they say, “Dhakar taka Dhakay thake” (the money earned in Dhaka stays in Dhaka). I have no hope that I can escape this situation. Against my desire, I am now waiting for my daughters to grow up and take my place in the factories. This was not the life I want for them, but this is my only hope now”.
Karim Khan says that when ‘Women working the whole day with different male workers are enticed by them, and start extra marital relationships with younger male workers and often divorce their husbands – even though they might have children. The garments industry has resulted in so many challenges for us, men’.
Women usually have little control over the wages they earn: Mini yearns to ‘send some money to my parents who endured so much hardships in bringing me up. Though I earn money, I can’t send them any. I really wish I could, but I have no way. It is the unwritten rule (custom) for married women to surrender any money earned to the husband. Those who don’t follow this rule are not considered good women and it is acceptable for husbands to beat wives who do not follow this custom’.
Javed looks down on the ‘women who come to work in the garments factory, when they have no other option. Otherwise nobody comes to work here. These are women who have faults in their character. After they have created problems in the village, they move to the city. They don’t like to continue their relation with their husbands and they constantly change their husbands. A job in the garments is so that they can marry another man’. Most RMG workers, both men and women aspire to go back home to their villages:
Full time RMG workers are also full time housewives:
Shipa says, ‘I want to work in the garments factory for one more year. Then I will go back home. When people have no way, then they come to work in the garments factory. I think garments factory is the second jail of Bangladesh. If there is an emergency and we need to get home, it is not possible to do so, unless we can get signatures from 3 to 4 supervisors. We barely earn enough to live. It is not possible to spend money for education, or nutritious food, even for the children. We all want to go back home (to the village) someday’.
Afreen like other workers often has to do overtime work at factory. ‘Yesterday night, I came home at about 2 am.
Note: Names of the respondents have been changed to protect their identities.