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

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Women’s employment in the textile manufacturing sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco to look for work. It can be argued that the rural ethos of this labour force has an impact on their adaptation to an urban way of life and the development of an industrial consciousness. As has already been indicated, the social stratum from which the women workers emerge suffers from precariousness of income. The head of the family is usually unable to take care of the needs of his household. While still very young, children start looking for work. Because of socialization, girls and young women invariably have affective ties to their families and are ready to make economic contributions to them. When a young woman works she tends to contribute much more than a young man to the family’s expenses, sometimes becoming the chief income earner. Women’s employment, however, does not necessarily free them from the social and cultural constraints of their status as women who belong to a poor social stratum. In other words, the experience of class and gender subordination intersect. The survey showed that a third of the women workers do not reside with their parents. There is clearly some geographical mobility among the women workers, especially single women who leave their parents to look for a job in a different town. Some of them come from nearby towns like Kénitra, Tiflet and Maaziz, or from the rural areas, attracted to towns like Rabat-Salé, which offer greater opportunities of employment and better wages than they can find in their own towns. However, most of the women workers in the textile factories are unmarried and live with their parents. They are thus subject to the control of their parents, even while they are giving material support to the family. For many of them, the importance of their incomes to the family’s coping strategies is evident from the way that their own parents push them into seeking employment. According to the interviewees, the mother or father sometimes accompanies the daughter to the factory gates to ask for a job. This is confirmed by factory heads and it suggests that parents do not object to the employment of their daughters. On the contrary, they drive them into seeking employment in order to earn an income. At the same time, young women are rarely free from parental or marital tutelage. The majority of the women reported that they had to ask for the authorization of their father or husband in order to work. As we see below, the way the girls are socialized limits their sense of responsibility and commitment to work. The paradox is that the families of the women workers, spurred by economic necessity, push them into the employment market, but with an education that 68
Gender and employment in Moroccan textile industries has instilled into them the notion that it is the man who should work and meet the needs of the family. Even the Moroccan Code of Personal Status, which governs the status of women and family relations, stipulates this. The Code is based on traditional Islamic law and on the Malékite rite. It places women under male tutelage throughout their lives — celibacy, marriage, divorce, widowhood — and institutionalizes a strict division of gender roles: the man is the head of the family and is responsible for maintaining his wife and children; the woman has duties only towards her spouse or, rather, her master (Naciri, 1998:16). Table 5: Number of people in the family who are entirely dependent on the respondents, according to gender None One to three Four to eight Female 67 (34%) 83 (42%) 46 (24%) Male 17 (61%) 8 (29%) 3 (11%) Total 84 (38%) 91 (41%) 49 (22%) The wages of young women workers are important in supplementing the household budget. Families follow various survival strategies to meet their material needs. In the same family, the father might be a occasional labourer, the mother a domestic servant, the sons, street vendors and the daughters, factory workers. The above table shows that most of the women workers have at least one person for whom they are economically responsible. According to the female interviewees, in most cases, their wages constitute the largest and most stable source of income for the family. Yet the sociocultural constraints on a woman’s status still make themselves felt. Even if a young women is a source of revenue for her family she remains under the authority of her parents, who dictate her behaviour and control how her wages are spent. Nevertheless, the economic needs of families and the changes that the society is undergoing are putting a strain on this parental control. The young women who emigrate to the big towns to find work, and perhaps live on their own, are inevitably part of this change. 3. Women workers and domestic responsibilities Domestic responsibilities are seen by society as inherently belonging to women, whatever paid employment they may have. 69
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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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Becoming a garment worker 5Becoming
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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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