The poverty impacts of female employment

Do poor women gain from globalisation? A comparative study of women workers in the ‘traded’ and ‘non-traded’ sectors in Bangladesh and Vietnam sought to answer this question through an exploration of the women’s backgrounds, working conditions and reasons for working.

The study was carried out by the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies in Dhaka and the Centre for Family and Women’s Studies in Hanoi. The ‘traded’ sector was represented in the study by export-oriented garment manufacturing, a female-intensive sector in both countries. The ‘non-traded’ sector was represented in the study by a sample of ‘non-garment’ women workers in a variety of domestic-oriented occupations and who were drawn from the same low-income neighbourhoods as the garment workers.

Employment patterns

The study highlighted some patterns common to both contexts. Women working in the export sector tended to be younger, single and recent migrants to the city. They were also from poorer households than women working in the non-traded sector. Their main reasons for taking up such work included household poverty, the search for economic independence and the absence of alternative employment in the countryside. In both contexts, however, the poorest workers in the sample were to be found outside the garment industry in casual wage labour or petty trade in the hidden informal economy.

There were also important differences between the two contexts, the most significant of which was a result of the socialist orientation of the Vietnamese state. One consequence of this was that workers in Vietnam had higher levels of education than workers in Bangladesh. There were also more state-owned enterprises in Vietnam both within and outside the export sector. State regulation of the economy meant that workers generally enjoyed higher levels of formal protection, labour standards and unionisation, particularly in the state-owned sectors. However, there was also greater state regulation of migration to the cities. As a result, workers without residential permits in urban Vietnam were a particularly disadvantaged group.

These preliminary findings suggest a qualified ‘yes’ to the question of whether women gain from globalisation. The most obvious gain was an expansion in women’s labour market opportunities through the availability of a new form of employment. Secondly, in comparison to the alternative opportunities available to these women, they gained a more stable form of employment. And finally, since many of these young women remitted part of their salaries home, the gains from their employment were also extended directly to their families and indirectly to the rural economy.

Job quality

The qualification relates to the quality of the jobs gained through globalisation – the long working hours and, in comparison to international standards, poor working conditions, particularly in the Bangladesh context. In neither context did garment work represent a longer term livelihood option for poor women.

The implications for policy are:

• Transnational corporations have to be held responsible for the health, safety and dignity of those who contribute to their profits.
• However, attempts to improve the conditions of workers in the traded sector will have a limited impact on poverty unless the employment needs and social protection of those in the non-traded sector are addressed simultaneously. Some form of state accountability for the interests of all workers is therefore also essential.
• This suggests that the focus should be on providing a basic social floor for all, rather than minimum labour standards for a few.
• Finally, social protection measures need to be accompanied by social investments in upgrading women’s human capital so that they do not remain confined to the lower value end of global production.

Naila Kabeer (Sussex), Simeen Mahmud (Dhaka) and Tran Thi Van Anh (Hanoi)

Naila Kabeer
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK

T +44 (0)1273 678672

n.kabeer@ids.ac.uk

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