The Ready Made Garments (RMG) Workers’ Gender Ratio in Bangladesh

Sadril Shajahan,Md Faizul Islam,Afshana Choudhury,Fahim Chowdhury,Faria Admad

doi:10.20525/ijrbs.v10i7.1445

Abstract

It has been widely acknowledged that female workers account for 80% of the Ready Made Garments (RMG) industry’s workforce in Bangladesh but a number of studies estimated different male to female workers’ ratios ranging from 35: 65 to 55:45. To contribute to such debate, this paper leverage the data of the ‘Mapped in Bangladesh’ (MiB) project. While the objective of the MiB project is to enable transparency and accountability in the RMG sector by providing the industry stakeholders accurate, updated and authentic factory data collected through the factory census method and published in a digital map; this paper aims to shed light on the male to female ratio of workers employed in the RMG factories of Bangladesh is not 20:80, but it is 42:58 according to the findings from MiB data. Presenting such data, the study seeks to discuss how factory issues can influence the gender composition of RMG Workers. These issues such as factory locations, factory type, factory size and production sections are important to understand the challenges of future research addressing the gender composition of RMG workers in Bangladesh.

Highlights

Being part of the supply chain of highly globalized industry as one of the major contributors for manufacturing and exporting, Bangladesh Ready Made Garments (RMG) sector has the attention of a large pool of stakeholders
The analysis made here from the Mapped in Bangladesh (MiB) data embraced a huge number of factories, it is not beyond limitations
The factories located in the Export Processing Zones (EPZ) are not part of the analysis as those factories are still not part of MiB coverage

Summary

Introduction

Being part of the supply chain of highly globalized industry as one of the major contributors for manufacturing and exporting, Bangladesh Ready Made Garments (RMG) sector has the attention of a large pool of stakeholders. These stakeholders include global brands and buyers, suppliers, trade associations, government agencies and governance bodies, workers’ rights advocates, media, national and international NGOs, trade union activists and researchers and academicians. Any major incident in the sector generates enormous amount concerns among stakeholders. Resulting the death of over 1,100 garment workers, it is considered as the deadliest industrial accident in Bangladesh after which Bangladesh has experienced successful campaigns to improve labor safety (Paton 2020).

Objectives

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion