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Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco married women of childbearing age who do not have children is 23 per cent (BHDS data), while for garment factory workers the figure is between 39 per cent and 52 per cent. At the peak of childbearing age (20-29), when the great majority of ever-married women in Bangladesh have on average two living children, more than half of female garment factory workers do not have any children. Currently married women of reproductive age in garment factories have a lower number of children (1.7) and incidence of child bearing (40 per cent) than Bangladeshi women in general (2.8 children and 90 per cent, respectively) (Table 10b). The data presented in Tables 10a and 10b suggest, therefore, that married garment factory workers are controlling their fertility more effectively than Bangladeshi women in general. In her recent study (Afsar 1998), the author found that the use of contraception is widespread among the married garment factory workers and even unmarried workers of those factories (90 and 60 per cent of the male and female respondents) are familiar with condom. The former category claim to use contraceptives out of fear of pay cuts or termination of employment if they become pregnant. By and large, garment factory workers neither enjoy paid maternity leave, nor do they have necessary institutional infrastructure to look after their children. Nearly three quarters of married garment factory workers depend on kinship networks for childcare activities, while the remaining one-quarter manage themselves. Given the fact that they face intense difficulties in meeting their own basic needs as well as those of the family, and the pressure of the workload in a competitive market, it is natural that they try to defer pregnancy until they achieve a more comfortable position in the family. Based on existing data, it is projected that delayed marriage and effective control of fertility by the garment factory workers would help in reaching the goal of replacement level fertility by the year 2005 set by the government (GB, 1994:6). 7 3. Gender differentials in income and income-earning opportunities The sample female workers of garment factories earn 77 per cent of the income of their male counterparts, while the figure is 90 per cent for other manufacturing industries (Table 8). The gender differentials in average wage of the female garment factory workers is comparable with the income ratio in urban areas (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 1996). In the present study, the highest gender 122
Gender dimensions of labour migration in Dhaka city’s formal manufacturing sector disparity in income is found at supervisory/technical/managerial level, which is consistent with Rahman’s (1993:103) findings on wages in export processing zones. 8 At the managerial level, often the total number of workers is included in the sample owing to the availability of only a small number of women in this category. Hence it was not always possible to draw gender-disaggregated samples by matching age. As a result, the gender gap is higher in this group as demonstrated by lower male-female earning ratios for both garment (0.73) and nongarment (0.83) than either skilled (0.87 and 1.02 respectively) or unskilled (0.82 and 1.02 respectively) workers levels (Table 8). The above discussion suggests the importance of age in determining income. However, it also reveals that a sample female worker earns on average 10 to 25 per cent less than her male counterpart even after controlling for age. Hence, there are other socioeconomic factors that can help explain this gap. Both number of years of schooling and experience from other factories are important variables influencing income. On average, a male garment factory worker had 3 years of schooling and about 1.5 years of experience as opposed 2.6 and 1.2 years respectively for his female counterparts. While the average education of male and female workers in the other manufacturing industries is almost equal (3.8 and 3.6 years respectively), men have on average 1.6 more years of experience than female workers. It should be noted that given the extremely limited opportunities for on-the-job training, workers often learn skills from their fellow workers informally in the garment industry. Once they learn machine operation they apply directly for positions as operators or skilled production workers in another factory. 9 Consequently, the turnover rate is very high, as revealed through interviews with the employers of the garment factories and confirmed in other studies (Chaudhury and Majumdar, 1993). Even at the managerial level, where men and women have almost equal levels of education, experience matters a lot, especially in other manufacturing industries where the gender gap with regard to experience is widest (14.4 years for men and 0.6 years for women). The opportunities for informal training in management are not so readily available as is the case with skilled operators. Results of a multivariate regression analysis run by Zohir and Majumdar (1996:51-52) on determinants of income of garment factory workers show that education beyond primary level, skills and experience are the most important factors affecting gender difference in earnings. They also found that even after controlling for all relevant variables, the income difference between male and female workers 123
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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 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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258 Women’s employment in the tex
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260 Annex Table 2:Level of wages an
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