Essay: Labour of Women under Patriarchal Capital: A Case of Women Garment Workers in Bangladesh

Field of Research: Gender Studies
Topic of Research:  Labour of Women under Patriarchal Capital: A Case of Women Garment Workers in Bangladesh.
Statement of Problem: Globalisation happens to be casting its impact on Bangladesh since the late 1970s. Only the impact has been accelerated during the last few decades for the increasing interaction of the national economy with transnational capital. As it is observed in many other developing countries, the government of Bangladesh has adopted a series of structural adjustment programmes to facilitate export-oriented industrialization. The export-based apparel industry is expanding faster in the country post-1980s and Bangladesh is now the second largest readymade garment (RMG) manufacturing country in the world. The comparative advantage for the growth of this sector in Bangladesh is ‘the unlimited availability of unusually cheap but usable labor of women’ (Siddiqi 1995).
Such kind of feminization of labour is a common trend happened among worldwide apparel industries. Marx () observed that the more developed the modern industry is, the more the labour of men gets superseded by that of women. In the 19th century cotton, textile, and, in some cases, clothing industries were overwhelmingly staffed by unskilled women (Marx in Smelser, 1973; Rosen, 2002; Ross, 1997). In its modern form, the feminisation of labour has turned into a major issue when the emerging Asian, Latin American and African textiles and apparel firms started recruiting huge numbers of young rural women. From the very beginning, textiles industries were interested in recruiting women for their presumed ‘docility’, economic and social ‘backwardness’, ‘nimbleness’, and ‘submissiveness’ to owners — the ideas emanating from the patriarchal culture. These construction of women is very useful for so-called sound industrial relations in terms of exploiting and depriving women workers from their lebour rights (Elson, 1983; Green, 1997; Kibria 2001).
At present women account for 80 percent of the labor force in RMG sector of Bangladesh. This is really a breakthrough for the life of rural women whose mobility were hugely restricted by the patriarchal culture. Some scholars (Sobhan and Khundker 2004) marked this phenomenon as close to a social revolution as Bangladesh has experienced. Within few decades, millions of women, mostly unmarried girls in their teens, have transplanted themselves from their villages to work in the RMG factories of Dhaka and Chittagong. The presence of millions of these women in city arena in the early morning and in the late afternoon, often after dark, is a change of seismic significance in the circumstances of the women of Bangladesh constructing them as a major social force in the public world.
However, such transformation makes women to face new forms relationship and discrimination in the factory not only in terms of low wage, but also in terms of domination in various forms for their social construction as ‘docile’ being. Women workers are offered lower ranks; deprived of adequate maternal leave, daycare center and toilet facilities; forced to work in vulnerable work environment; met with coercive action for participation in activities for labour rights; and falling prey to sexual violence.
Existing researches have attempted exploring different aspects of the RMG industry in Bangladesh with major focus on long-term economic prospect of the industry. Some attempts explored the causes and process of mobilization of women as garment workers (Kibria; Khan 2004) as well as various gender differences in terms and conditions of employment (Majumder and Begum 2006). However, elaborate exploration of nature of social transformation among women’s life being workers regarding the context of easy accumulation of patriarchal capital is yet to be accomplished.
Research Objective: This research attempt would cover three major objectives:
1. Explore the socio-economic and cultural changes in women’s life after their enrollment in factories.
2. Elucidate women’s experiences as labourers: how they are struggling to cope with both patriarchal and capitalist exploitation in the factory and constructing their new world.
3. Evaluate the overall social transformation of women’s life within larger society through the emergence of women as a great labour force.
Significant of the Research: The gender composition of the labour force in the world has changed significantly during neoliberal globalization. The global capital’s search for cheap labour inevitably allures the industrial reserve army i.e., the poor women living in the rural areas, to the EPZs, FTZs and world factories in the South. Third world states and entrepreneurs use the labour of poor women to expand their grip in invoking foreign investment. Thus women are increasingly entering the formal labour market through the complex chain of their overwhelming poverty and docility in a patriarchal context and easy accumulation of transnational capital.
In Bangladesh women’s entrance into the wage economy had been accelerated by the overgrowing   of the RMG market in Bangladesh. The accretion of local and global capital through the use of cheap labour of women is one side of the story. However, inflowing of women in apparel labour force has been reconditioning various traditional patriarchal culture and generating new pattern of social relationship. It defied patriarchal rules of ‘purdah’ and made women self-dependent as well as created a sense of dignity among them. But, coping with compatible urban life with low wage and burden of dual labour (labour in factory and household) makes their life miserable. Thus women as labourer represents a multifaceted pattern of the journey of women’s history.
Understanding the transformation of traditional society through female labour force participation and its impacts on overall women’s is a major concern in the area of gender studies. The proposed research would add some new dimensions to the ongoing theoretical endeavors of feminization of labour under patriarchal transnational capital.
Methods and Data: The study would be conducted in two major residential areas of garment workers: Jamgara of Asulia thana and Banktown of Savar thana under Dhaka district. A variety of complementary qualitative methods including case studies, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions would be used to collect data.
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