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

Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco
3. Wage differentials
A little more than 8.5 per cent of the total wage bill in
Bangladesh’s manufacturing sector is attributable to all female
employees, while the corresponding figure for women production
workers is about 11 per cent (see Table 3). These shares compare
unfavourably with their respective employment shares (15.3 per cent
and 17.8 per cent). The divergence between shares of female
employment and their wage bill is an explicit indication of the femalemale
wage differential prevailing in the sector. The compensation
packages for female employees are systematically low across the subsectors.
The average female-male wage ratio in Bangladesh’s
manufacturing sector in 1991-92 was 0.52 for all employees and 0.57
for production workers, suggesting a smaller gender differential in
wage determination among production-related workers. The time
series data presented in Table 2 indicate that while the female-male
wage ratio for production workers improved somewhat between the
late 1980s and early 1990s, the ratio in effect remained stagnant (or
deteriorated) when all employees are accounted for.
It is also worth noting that female-male wage differentials are
much lower in export-oriented industries. While we return to this
issue later, it may be pointed out, based on data presented in annex
Table 2, that in the wearing apparel industry (BSIC 323), female wages
as a share of male wages constitute 70 per cent in the case of all
employees and 90 per cent in the case of production workers — both
these proportions are higher than their respective sectoral averages.
4. Growth patterns
Prospects for growth in women’s industrial employment are
clearly conditioned by the pattern of manufacturing growth in
Bangladesh. Bakht’s 1993 study of the performance of the country’s
manufacturing sector in the 1980s found that the top 10 sub-sectors
in terms of growth in value-added were the following (in descending
order of their trend rate of growth): ready-made garments, silk and
synthetic textiles, dyeing and bleaching textiles, compressed liquefied
gas, soft drinks, fertilizer, hand and edge tools, china and ceramic
wares, fish and seafood, and tanning and finishing. In the bestperforming
sub-sector (RMG) women constituted 70 per cent of all
employees, while in most other sub-sectors female employment was
negligible.
In sum, the economic activity rate of women in general, and the
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