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Female employment under export-propelled industrialization 7Female employment under export- propelled industrialization: Prospects for internalizing global opportunities in the apparel sector in Bangladesh I. Introduction 1. Issues of concern Debapriya Bhattacharya and Mustafizur Rahman Current adjustment policies in Bangladesh, coupled with ongoing industrial restructuring, are expected to create employment opportunities in export-propelled activities. Data on the short-run impact of recent industrialization efforts in Bangladesh indicate that women constitute the majority of the incremental labour absorption in the country’s export-oriented manufacturing enterprises. Available information also suggests that conventional measures of gender bias (such as wage gaps, access to employment and lack of job security) are relatively inconspicuous in this organized segment of the manufacturing sector (Bhattacharya, 1994). This is true for manufacturing units located in both export processing zones (EPZs) and the domestic tariff area (DTA). It is characteristic of the labour force of foreign-owned units in particular — which tend to have the most advanced technology and the highest productivity levels in the country (Bhattacharya, 1998). Notwithstanding such ostensibly positive features of part of the country’s evolving labour market, concerns have been raised about the real nature and prospects for sustainability of these trends. It is 219
Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco widely held that “cheap and readily employable” labour underpins the competitive advantage of the country’s export sector. To begin to understand the nature of women’s industrial employment in Bangladesh, the pull and push factors that have contributed to the feminization of trade-oriented manufacturing employment must be examined. Concretely, it is important to analyse whether it is the gender gap in the effective wage structure that underpins the growth of female labour in export-oriented industries. In other words, given the low opportunity cost of female labour in Bangladesh, is female labour attractive because women are paid less than men for similar jobs — even when productivity differentials are accounted for? This particular concern is heightened by the fact that entrepreneurs prefer to employ young, single, literate women in export-oriented units. Accordingly, non-wage factors (such as social docility and amenability to repetitive process functions) prompt entrepreneurs to opt for a distinctive set of female labour. Thus non-wage factors clearly influence employment patterns as well. From a neoclassical perspective, one would expect that economic reforms leading to deregulation and liberalization would cause prices in the various factor markets in different countries to converge over time. Accordingly, stimulated by an increasingly competitive labour market, a gender-neutral equilibrium price of labour would gradually evolve, particularly in the export-oriented industrial sector, since this sector is relatively more exposed to the dynamics of factor prices in the global market. However, the pattern of structural changes in employment in the export sector may inhibit the gradual evolution of gender-neutral wage levels expected from global integration. This rigidity may be accentuated by women’s lack of occupational mobility. For example, the introduction of new technologies may affect women’s employment through automation, de-skilling of workers and/or increased skill requirements in key jobs. Admittedly, the effects of such technological shifts have not been uniform either for women or for men. But persistent functional gender segregation in exportoriented units may prevent transformation of the structure of the female labour force, reinforcing a possible gender-based wage differential. The sustainability of current trends in female labour absorption in the organized manufacturing sector is linked to the broader issue of competitiveness of Bangladesh’s industry. The major source of creation and protection of industrial competitive advantage in the global economy lies in the adoption and diffusion of new technologies, which lead to growth in the productivity of factors of production. It 220
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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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Gender dimensions of labour migrati
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Table 1: Total number of male and f
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Becoming a garment worker 5Becoming
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Becoming a garment worker garment w
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Becoming a garment worker Table 1:
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Becoming a garment worker being. Th
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