Employment And Women’s Capabilities

Bangladesh is a developing country in South Asia, and is also one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Out of the161million people of Bangladesh, around47million live below national poverty line. Recently, however, the country has shown progress in socio economic indicators such as life expectancy, increases in girls’ education, poverty reduction, child mortality rate reductions. Poverty reduction has always been a core concern on Bangladesh’s development agenda, as evidenced in all the five-year plans of the country.Since2005, the country’s GDP growth rate has sustained at around6percent and this continued growth is driven by exports from the Ready Made Garment (RMG) sector. This industry has created jobs in the manufacturing and service, and a reduction in agricultural employment. Bangladeshi women have been an integral part of this transformation and have been instrumental in poverty reduction and rural development. There are many studies and reports on garment workers which show the varied impact of employment. Some studies have pointed out positive changes in the lives of women and also related such employment to poverty reduction. Others have surfaced negative issues around bad working conditions, low wages, violation of human rights, and sexual harassment or exploitation in the industry. Hence, the proposed thesis examines the lives of garment worker women, through direct primary research, and tries to portray how their lives have changed. The nexus between the capabilities of women in poverty and their paid work in RMG in Bangladesh is the subject of this dissertation. By "capabilities" we mean an individual’s ability to do what she values doing. The other justification of this examination is that women responded positively to most of the policies implemented in Bangladesh, but still their paid work participation is very low.The private RMG-industry, however, brought dramatic changes in the lives of the women in Bangladesh by introducing millions of them into formal employment in return for monetary benefits. The major objective of this thesis is to look at the capabilities RMG-worker women gained through their employment in the industry, and the social changes she brought about. The study also compares the capabilities of non-working women with working women from same community. The research used mixed method strategies for data collection. For the quantitative data, a survey was conducted among119women garment workers, and50non-working women from the same community. For qualitative information, case stories were collected through life story method and field visits were made to a particular community where the RMG workers reside with their families. In addition, three focus group discussions were conducted with40total participants. The study was guided by Amartya Sen’s Capability approach. The major indicators in the survey were decision making in the household, mobility, healthcare service seeking behavior, future aspirations, reasons for joining the labor force, imaginations regarding good and bad incidences in life, and the requirements for a good life. The major finding is that employment in the RMG industry has increased women’s capability and freedom by transforming them into economic actors from passive viewers of the economy. It is also shown that, by expanding their individual choices about when to enter into employment, who to marry, how to manage income through savings and spending on personal need, these women feel empowered to make more decisions in the household. It has also created the capability of imagination, particularly of how women view their future. Finally, it has altered men’s views and those of other members of society on how women can participate in financial decision-making and the well being of the family. The major social changes observed include the entry of married couples into paid work for both members, breaking traditional extended family patterns into nuclear families for improving their living standards. One remarkable finding is that these women are contributing to running the urban and rural economies through purchasing household consumer goods such as televisions and furniture in credit installments, and still saving enough to send their children to school or to lease land in their native villages.It is evident that their employment in the formal RMG sector also gives them the skills to eventually undertake entrepreneurial ventures in other trades such as tailoring, fabric trades, and other related small business. It allows women to have aspirations to go outside country to earn money, and for their children’s education. The research concludes that there should be more recognition from the government on the contribution of women workers in the economy through ensuring better working environment, and potentially establishing residential schools for these garment workers’children in their villages so that the quality of education of their children is ensured, which will ultimately take the country forward. To become a middle income country by2021, Bangladesh as a highly populated country, should take initiatives to establish more labour intensive industry for increasing women’s employment as this will change women status along with economic growth. In conclusion, it was found that employing women instead of government cash transfer or welfare, is a way to achieve "active development" as earning an income is a resource women can use to develop their agency, which is the ability to make important choices and transform these choices into outcomes.