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Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco younger than her male counterparts. The average age of a female worker in garments was 13 years, while for other manufacturing industries the average was 18 years, compared to averages of 15 and 20 years, respectively, for their male counterparts (Table 3). A wider gap did not appear in present age between male and female workers in the sample since they were drawn by matching age. Nevertheless, cross-classification of age by year of migration shows that a female recent migrant from a garment factory is, on average, 17 years old, as opposed to 19 years for her male colleagues (Table 8). Although the average present age of a migrant woman in other manufacturing industries is 29 years, she is two years younger than a male migrant in those industries. 2. Delayed marriage and fertility reduction The above discussion confirms that garment factories are generating employment for younger women. It is also interesting to examine whether entry into formal manufacturing leads to delayed marriage. Delayed marriage itself is considered to be an important step in controlling population growth. The majority of women workers (52 per cent) from the sample garment factories are currently unmarried, compared to nearly 74 per cent of male workers from the same and 20 per cent of female workers from other manufacturing industries (Table 4). Nearly a tenth of the women workers from the garment factories and the other manufacturing industries were reported to be divorced/separated or widowed. None of the male workers were either divorced/separated or widowed, irrespective of the type of industry. Apart from the figures of the divorced/widowed category, the marital status of both the female and male workers was almost the reverse of the urban pattern (see Table 9). 6 During field work, it was observed that women workers often tried to hide the incidence of divorce/desertion, due to cultural inhibition. Male workers too are not immune from such inhibition, and no man admitted to being either divorced or widowed. It is also interesting to note that, unlike those of their counterparts from garment factories, the marital status of the respondents of other manufacturing industries shows a striking similarity with the urban patterns (Table 9). However, the predominance of non-migrant and long-term migrant women among respondents from other manufacturing units might explain the congruence with figures for urban women. According to the survey, 38 per cent of currently unmarried garment factory workers wanted to defer their marriage until they 120
Gender dimensions of labour migration in Dhaka city’s formal manufacturing sector save enough money. However one can observe a marked gender gap in this regard. The majority of men (53 per cent) compared to 12 per cent of women workers from garment factories wanted to defer their marriage for that reason. The bulk of the female garment factory workers (77 per cent), on the contrary, were waiting for their parents to find a suitable groom for them. The corresponding figures for their male counterparts were 38 per cent from garment and 15 per cent from the other manufacturing industries. The response pattern of female workers from other manufacturing industries is quite similar to that of their counterparts in garment industries. The relevant issue at this stage of the first generational migration is not whether women defer marriage to generate savings or whether they surrender to their parents’ choice of suitable marriage partner. Rather, the income-earning capacity of young women, with low levels of education from largely landless families, becomes a bargaining tool in arranging marriages. In rural areas, a girl from a poorer household is often considered to be a burden and is married off as soon as possible. The employment opportunities afforded by urban manufacturing industries change this picture. The average age of female garment factory worker is 17 years. Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey data (1994) reveal that about 60 per cent of Bangladeshi women were married by the time they were age 15. It also shows that urban women marry later than their rural counterparts (15.4 versus 14.3 respectively), with an overall difference of more than one year in the median age at marriage among women between 20 and 49 (Mitra et al., 1994:74-75). Had they not been employed, they might have been married off earlier, and without much consideration for the suitable groom (Afsar, 2000a). Hence, the employment opportunities generated by the RMG sector for the young migrant rural women appear not only to improve their chances of making a suitable marriage, but may also have a potential impact on fertility reduction since marriage is delayed. In order to examine whether work opportunities in garment factories leads to fertility reduction of the young women workers, comparisons were made with Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) data (Mitra et al., 1994) and other studies on female garment factory workers (Zohir and Majumdar, 1996). Table 10a shows that whereas “ever married” women of reproductive age have on average 2.4 children (BDHS data), based on sample surveys of garment factory workers, the average number of children is significantly lower for garment factory workers, varying between 1.2 and 0.8 (Zohir and Majumdar, 1996 and Afsar, 1998b). Similarly, the proportion of ever- 121
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Women’s Employment in the Textile
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This United Nations Research Instit
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Acknowledgements Many people have b
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notwithstanding the inertia of the
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Carol Miller is a policy analyst on
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xii VII. Contribution of different
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Introduction 1 Introduction 1 Shahr
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Introduction Table 1: Basic indicat
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Introduction women have been tradit
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Introduction The chapters on Bangla
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Introduction occurs, on average, at
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Introduction women workers related
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Introduction in low-income countrie
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Introduction by repaying their “d
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Introduction participate in labour
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Introduction their bargaining power
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Introduction processing zones hypot
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Introduction IV. The case studies T
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Introduction experience in garment
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Introduction V. Conclusion Although
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Introduction improved technology. T
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Introduction References Afsar, R. (
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Introduction Household Power Relati
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Wage discrimination by gender in Mo
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Becoming a garment worker V. Conclu
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Becoming a garment worker is a job
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Becoming a garment worker Endnotes
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Becoming a garment worker Cole P. D
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Women’s employment in the textile
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