Personal Safety and Fear of Sexual Harassment among Female Garment Workers in Bangladesh

Personal safety and fear of sexual harassment may discourage women from participating at work and in public life, limiting their life opportunities. The study proposed to determine personal safety and fear of sexual harassment among female garment workers in Bangladesh. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 201 female garment workers from Dhaka and Chittagong cities. Participants were selected using snowballing sampling techniques with the data collected by using anonymised questionnaires. The Pearson product–moment correlation and analysis of variance were employed using SPSS version 27.0. Results showed that 25% of the participants perceived that they were most likely to be sexually harassed by their manager and 25% never felt safe going to work. Age and the marital status of the participants were significantly associated with personal safety and fear of sexual harassment (p < 0.05). The correlation analysis found a significant positive correlation between personal safety and the fear of sexual harassment [r (201) = 0.85 **, p < 0.05], among the participants. A deep commitment from leadership with cooperation at all levels of the organisations is required to address these acts of violence and organisational conditions, rather than a form of unreflective compliance or a ‘gender-neutral’ approach that fails to recognise individual needs and maintain gender inequality.

Challenging Patriarchy: The Changing Definition of Women’s Empowerment

Traditionally, prevailing patriarchal norms and social values have confined Bangladeshi women to the private sphere and placed them in a position of disempowerment vis-à-vis men. Since the 1970s the emergence of the readymade garment (RMG) industry has provided women with opportunities for waged work into the public sphere and linked them into the global economy. By using Naila Kabeer’s conceptualisation of empowerment and Walby’s theory of patriarchy as theoretical lenses of analysis, this paper examines what happens when women are empowered in the economic sphere and whether that transfers over into the domestic sphere in terms of changes in patriarchal relations. Evidence from semi-structured interviews with 40 female garment workers, the paper analyses their lives outside the workplace. It argues that experience of paid work can offer female RMG workers a degree of empowerment within home and society, but the level of this varied for women. For “Independent” and “Progressive” women the state of gender relations was changing to an extent as a result of paid employment, whereas “Traditional” women’s entry into the workplace had not brought about any change in the private form of patriarchy. Overall, women’s participation in paid employment such as their role as a wage earner, their increased freedom of movement and autonomy, self-confidence, a greater degree of awareness regarding their life decisions presents a radical challenge to the myth of the male breadwinner model of the family in Bangladesh and the notion of patriarchy. Social Science Review, Vol. 37(2), Dec 2020 Page 239-265

Garments furniture design for Bangladeshi workers considering ergonomic principles

BACKGROUND: In Bangladesh, workers typically spend at least eight hours a day at garment factories in sitting and/or standing position. Prolonged sitting on ergonomically unfit furniture causes back, neck, and shoulder pain, which reduces the working efficiency and leading to low productivity. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to design ergonomically correct furniture for Bangladeshi garment workers considering multivariate analysis on the anthropometric data. METHODS: Twelve anthropometric measures and five furniture dimensions were measured. The sample comprised of 600 volunteer workers from different garment industry. The furniture dimensions were compared with the relevant anthropometric characteristics and found a high level of mismatch (e.g. seat height (male 18%, female 94.25%), seat depth (male 96%, female 63.50%), seat width (male 9.50%, female 36.25%), sewing table height (male 56.50%, female 50%), and desk height for inspection, cutting and ironing table (male 100%, female 100%). RESULTS: New design specifications were proposed of the worker which improved the match percentage. The multivariate anthropometric analysis generated 8 cases and for each case the ranges of anthropometric measurements have been identified. CONCLUSION: The results will help to design robust ergonomic garments furniture.

Rights without remedy: the disconnection of labour across multiple scales and domains

This article examines the disconnection between promises of labour rights made at the international level and their inaccessibility to workers at the local level. Going beyond the concept of a global ‘governance gap’, it draws on a political economy perspective and focuses on the intersecting and competing roles of different forms of capital and the state, in curtailing workers’ paths to remedy in the global apparel (garment) value chain. A longitudinal case study of a campaign by Turkish garment workers, seeking remedy for lost earnings and severance payments due factory closure and wage theft, is the focus for analysis. The workplace is conceptualised as a key ‘arena of disarticulation’ in the apparel value chain, central in simultaneously embedding and dis-embedding commitments by brands, the state and employers, such that even wages for work done may be denied to workers with relative impunity. The article considers to what extent promises made in abstraction at the international level can hope to guarantee conditions at workplace level.