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Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco remains at a quarter. Significant positive impact of the length of stay in Dhaka city on income was also revealed through their regression analysis. Given the size and purposive nature of the data drawn for the present study, it is difficult to isolate the importance of migration in influencing income from other socioeconomic variables. Table 8 shows that the gender-based wage differential is the highest in the case of recent migrants and lowest for non-migrants. This suggests a positive impact on income of longer duration of residency in Dhaka, which may be related to the corresponding opportunities for informal training (Table 8). 10 The data suggest that men have greater opportunities to bargain and acquire more skills with longer stay in Dhaka city, as opposed to their female colleagues. In the absence of similar or more rewarding job opportunities in the city and limited scope to upgrade their skills and educational level, migrant women need more time than their male colleagues to supersede their nonmigrant counterparts. Women tend to face greater burdens of poor and inadequate living and environmental conditions, compared to male garment factory workers. Migration has provided an opportunity for young women from rural backgrounds to secure employment and to earn a wage for the first time. Although nearly 40 per cent of the total male and female garment factory workers earn less than the prescribed minimum wage, which was set at Tk 900 per month in 1993, it must be pointed out that from almost no cash income, 60 per cent of female garment factory workers were earning more than poverty level income if fixed at one dollar a day as poverty line (1985 purchasing power parity terms). A comparison with the employment situation in rural areas is instructive. In rural areas, 83 per cent of employed women aged 15 plus years, compared to 15 per cent of men, are engaged as unpaid family helpers. With the exception of the 4 per cent who work as employees, the remaining 13 per cent are either self-employed (7 per cent) or day labourers (5.6 per cent) (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 1996:48). Not only do rural women have highly limited options for paid employment, the wage/salary they receive is far below the urban average. The latest labour force survey data reveal that 62 per cent of rural women as opposed to 44 per cent of urban women in salaried service get less than Tk 250 per week which can be considered below poverty level income (see above). Those who make more than Tk 500 per week constitute 26 per cent of urban women and 15 per cent of rural women. Similarly, the average wage rate for a female day 124
Gender dimensions of labour migration in Dhaka city’s formal manufacturing sector labourer in urban areas is Tk 36 per day, which is higher by Tk 11 than a rural woman’s daily wage (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 1995). Existing micro studies indicate that female workers in the rural and informal sectors earn between a third and half of male wages. The situation in the urban formal sector appears to be much better, with the ratio of female to male wages ranging between 72 per cent and 97 per cent, depending on skills level (World Bank, 1996). Conversely, had these women migrated and been engaged as domestic servants, they would have earned only Tk 690 (ADB, 1996) per month, which is half of their present average wage (Tk 1,389). Clearly, migration and the absorption in garment factories opened up better earning avenues for younger women from landless households with low level of education, compared to rural wage labourers or those migrants who worked as housemaids. 4. Savings and remittances Both the proportion of workers who save and the proportion of income saved is greater for female than for male workers. Whereas women workers in the garment industry save on average 8 per cent of their income, the figure for male workers is 6 per cent (Table 12). The respective figures for other manufacturing industries are 14 per cent for women and 10 per cent for men. Male and female migrant workers in the garment factories save on average six to eight times more of their income than non-migrants. Similarly, in other manufacturing industries, a migrant worker saves a proportionately greater amount than a non-migrant worker. Propensity to save appears to increase with age. Thus workers belonging to the 30-39 year age group save nearly 20 per cent of their urban income, as opposed to nearly 3 per cent of their youngest counterparts (10-19 years) in garment factories. This holds equally for both male and female workers (Table 13). It should be noted that the monetary wage of garment factory workers also appears to increase with age, though this is not the case in the other manufacturing industries. Nearly two fifths of migrant workers are able to send remittances to their families of origin. An analysis of remittances shows that the average size of the remittances as a proportion of monthly income is higher for garment factory workers than for workers in other manufacturing industries. On average, migrant male and female garment factory workers send 39 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively, of their income per month (Table 13). The corresponding figures for 125
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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 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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