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

Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco
The figure for the exclusively locally-owned private sector units is a
little above seven. The overwhelming majority (98.7 per cent) of the
women employees are located in private sector enterprises (local and
joint ventures taken together).
It may be observed from Table 2 that, between 1988-89 and 1991-
92, women’s share in total manufacturing employment increased from
14.1 per cent to 15.3 per cent, whereas operatives increased from 16.4
per cent to 18.1 per cent. The share of female workers in total
manufacturing employment registered a fall between 1990-91 and
1991-92, but the extent to which this is a statistical artefact or a
reflection of recent reform measures affecting the manufacturing
sector remains to be seen.
Sectoral distribution
The sectoral distribution of female manufacturing employment
in Bangladesh remains highly skewed, as shown in Table 3 and annex
Table 1. The wearing apparel sector, categorized under Bangladesh
Standard Industrial Code (BSIC) 323, alone employs about 85 per cent
of the female industrial employees (which is about 12.9 per cent of
total manufacturing employment). This is followed by textile
manufacturing including cotton, synthetic and jute textiles (BSIC 321
and 322), which account for about 6 per cent of female industrial
employees or approximately 1 per cent of total manufacturing
employment. The third most important provider of female
employment is food processing (BSIC 311 and 312), which account
for just over 3.2 per cent of female industrial employees or 0.5 per
cent of all manufacturing employment. Wood work, cigarette
manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries employ about 1.84 per
cent, 1.47 per cent and 0.58 per cent of female industrial employees
respectively. Annex Table 1 shows that this pattern of sectoral
distribution for all types of female employees also holds true for female
production workers.
The current state of industrial statistics, unfortunately, does not
allow us to readily relate the market orientation of the enterprises
with the gender composition of their labour force. Nonetheless, it is
quite evident from the above figures that at least 91 per cent of female
manufacturing employment is concentrated in enterprises that either
produce for direct export (e.g., garments and jute), or that produce
outputs “deemed exports”, because they constitute export linkage
industries.
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