Abstract
AbstractIn Dhaka city and its fringe peri-urban sprawls water for domestic use is an increasingly contested commodity. The location of our research, Gazipur district, bordering the growing city of Dhaka, is the heartland of Bangladesh’s Ready Made Garments (RMG) industry, which has spread unplanned in former wetlands and agrarian belts. However, unlike Dhaka, the almost fully industrialized peri-urban areas bordering the city, like many other such areas globally, function in an institutional vacuum. There are no formal institutional arrangements for water supply or sanitation. In the absence of regulations for mining groundwater for industrial use and weakly enforced norms for effluent discharge, the expansion of the RMG industry and other industries has had a disproportionate environmental impact. In this complex and challenging context, we apply a political economy lens to draw attention to the paradoxical situation of the increasingly “public” lives of poor Bangladeshi women working in large numbers in the RMG industry in situations of increasingly “private” and appropriated water sources in this institutionally liminal peri-urban space. Our findings show that poorly paid work for women in Bangladesh’s RMG industry does not translate to women’s empowerment because, among others, a persisting masculinity and the lack of reliable, appropriate and affordable WASH services make women’s domestic water work responsibilities obligatory and onerous.
Highlights
Bangladesh is South Asia’s fastest emerging economy with a Gross Domestic Product growth rate of 7.11% (World Bank, 2017a)
How has this employment changed the everyday lives and livelihoods of this essentially female work force? While researchers acknowledge the formidable challenges for Bangladeshi women working in the Ready Made Garment (RMG) industry (Feldman, 2009; Kabeer, 1999, 2000, 2001; Kabeer & Mahmud, 2004a, b), there are claims that the mass employment of women in the RMG industry has led to significant gender gains (World Economic Forum, 2018, 2019)
Informed by a feminist political economy framework and guided by critical participatory research methods, our aim was to facilitate some 30 female RMG workers working and living in Bhadam to reflect on their everyday lives in the public and private spaces where they work and live
Summary
Bangladesh is South Asia’s fastest emerging economy with a Gross Domestic Product growth rate of 7.11% (World Bank, 2017a). This is a significant achievement for a predominantly low income country. The Ready Made Garment (RMG) industry, the country’s largest export sector, is a key contributor to this economic growth trajectory and is the country’s largest employer of women. It would not be incorrect to say that female RMG workers are key drivers of the Bangladeshi economy (see Rahman & Siddiqui, 2015). How has this employment changed the everyday lives and livelihoods of this essentially female work force?
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