Women's Employment - United Nations Research Institute for Social ...

Gender dimensions of labour migration in Dhaka city’s formal manufacturing sector
considered safer for daughters by parents than unknown sources.
In many cases, respondents who migrated for the present job
also had information about the nature of the work and wage. In this
regard, non-migrants (those who were born in Dhaka or who migrated
prior to 1980), had greater access to such information than migrants.
Being in Dhaka for a long time, they could easily acquire such
information through informal networks and more formal sources. The
majority of women workers (53 per cent) from other manufacturing
units belong to this category, thus suggesting that they have a better
information base than other categories of workers (both male and
female) in the sample. At the same time, there is a greater propensity
of female recent migrants from the garment factories to have prior
information about the nature of their present job than their long-term
migrant colleagues (49 per cent compared to 35 per cent). This is
consistent with Peterson et al.’s (1988) proposition that recent migrants
have better information regarding job than long-term migrants.
However, the percentage of male workers who had such information
did not change by duration of period since migration. Increased access
to information by female workers suggests wider and greater
networking among recent migrant female workers from garment
factories. More specifically, the role of social networks in supplying
job-related information to migrant workers of the garment factory
can be considered an important determinant of labour migration.
Of those workers from garment factories who reported migrating
for employment, 38 per cent of the female workers and 34 per cent of
the male workers came directly for the present job. Only 14 per cent
of female workers from other manufacturing units came for the
present job (Table 3). Thus the gap between migrating for an existing
job and migrating for a prospective job is the most narrow in the case
of female garment factory workers and largest for female workers of
other manufacturing units. 5 Other studies (Zohir and Majumader,
1996) suggest that the waiting period for getting a job in a garment
factory is less than a week for the majority of workers (for 60 per cent
of female and 50 per cent of male job seekers). And, with the exception
of about 10 per cent, all the remaining job seekers, irrespective of sex,
obtain employment within a month (Zohir and Majumdar, 1996). The
conclusion that can be reached, therefore, is that the risk of migration
in search of a job is minimized through effective information exchange,
strong and reliable social networks available to migrant labourers,
and greater job opportunities for migrants in Dhaka city.
115