MADE IN BANGLADESH

These days, it's hard to find a shirt, skirt, or pair of shorts made in the United States. Check the labels in your dresser or closet; most likely you'll find items assembled in Pakistan, China, Guatemala, Vietnam, or any number of other developing nations.

The hands attaching those labels almost always belong to women, says SIUC sociology professor Kathryn Ward, who studies women's work and lives in the global economy. Her recent research has focused on Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest nations. Bangladesh's economy hinges upon garment manufacturing, which brings in three-quarters of the nation's export earnings. (Tellingly, says Ward, "Wal-Mart is the biggest buyer in Bangladesh.")

The trade agreements that effectively ended the garment industry in Southern Illinois in the 1980s gave Bangladeshi women their first decent work opportunity outside the home. The garment industry there employs about 2 million workers, mostly women who work as seamstresses 10 to 12 hours a day, doing piecework. Many earn only the equivalent of $16 per month, however. Few are given the higher-paid jobs usually held by men, such as fabric cutting or managing factories. Some have lost their jobs due to more recent trade policies and have no other good options for making money.

Ward's interest in Bangladesh was sparked when she spent two weeks in 2000 consulting with the University of Dhaka about its women's studies program.

"I saw all the different types of formal and informal work that women were doing," she says, as well as the hardships these women faced. Dhaka sociology professor Mahmuda Islam also told Ward about the problems with domestic violence in Bangladesh, which is a highly patriarchal society. It's estimated that up to 60 percent of Bangladeshi women have experienced domestic violence, ranging from beatings to rapes and acid burns (a common punishment by husbands or by in-laws angered if they cannot extract continuing dowry payments from the wife or her family).

Women's work and domestic abuse are connected issues, says Ward. In general, the more money Bangladeshi women earn, the more independent they are and the less likely to suffer abuse. (Few women--or men, for that matter--are able to live on their own in Bangladesh. "You need multiple incomes to support a household," says Ward.)

Work and women's status

How are Bangladeshi women's work options affected by global economic restructuring--and how do those options affect their social status and welfare?

Ward began exploring these issues in 2001 with two SIUC graduate students from Bangladesh, Shyamal Das and Fahmida Rahman. The trio interviewed 44 women in Dhaka, the nation's capital, about their work histories and the degree of control they had over their lives. This pilot study was funded by a small SIUC grant.

A fellowship from the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies allowed Ward to continue her fieldwork while on sabbatical. Then, with a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, she launched a much larger project in 2003 to see how global restructuring was affecting the work choices of women in Dhaka.

Housed at the Independent University of Bangladesh, the project relied on a team of Bangladeshi fieldworkers and supervisors to survey some 300 garment workers, sex workers (not surprisingly, they prefer the term to "prostitute"), domestic servants, and housewives. Although some Bangladeshi women have small businesses or work on construction crews, most work in one of these sectors. After two years and eight rounds of interviews, nearly 90 percent of the women are still participating in the study--an extraordinary follow-up rate.

"No one else has done this kind of longitudinal research in developing countries," Ward says. Other scholars have studied specific work sectors, she explains, but not the overall picture for women over time.

The fieldworkers asked the women about their families, education, and income; their work histories and preferences; how much say-so they had over household finances, child rearing, birth control, and health care; and their exposure to violence in the home or workplace.

The team found that garment workers and some groups of sex workers--those based in hotels or houses rather than in brothels or on the streets--have more control over the circumstances of their lives than other Bangladeshi women do. They usually have more education. They have more income: garment workers make about twice what maids do; sex workers make five or six times what garment workers do. They have better access to health care and education for their children. They are more independent and more mobile, able to go out by themselves in society.

Garment workers (though not sex workers) are less likely to be abused by husbands or in-laws, and they take a more equal part in household decisions. They are, to use a buzzword, more empowered.

In contrast, servants and "floating" sex workers--those who work on the streets--have little to no education, were likely to have been trafficked into their jobs, and are at high risk of violence.

To survive, women tend to move often between the "formal" and "informal" work sectors. Many work in both at the same time, holding a factory job, working as a maid or running a little business, and doing their own household chores. And recent changes in international trade agreements have pushed many female factory workers into self-employment or domestic service. (Some of these findings were published in Critical Sociology in 2004.)

A wake-up call for governments

Researchers must take the complexity of women's work into account, Ward says, to understand how globalization is affecting women's lives and Third World economies. Policy makers must take it into account to improve women's lot.

Globalization has both helped and hurt women in Bangladesh and other Third World nations, Ward and University of Massachusetts economist Jean Pyle argued in a 2003 article in the journal International Sociology. "Many multinational corporations prefer lower-cost women workers, who they believe are unlikely to resist adverse conditions," Ward and Pyle wrote. Women depend on those wages but often don't earn enough to make ends meet--and don't dare demand better conditions.

"They may be in the formal sector, but they're paid so little they have to work in the informal sector too," Ward said in a 2003 interview. "If you ignore women's labor in these informal sectors and the forces that push them there, then you generate policies that harm not just women but households and families."

Ward has argued that much global economic growth and restructuring has depended on the women who are willing to take low-paying factory work and to do informal-sector work as well. Many nations whose policies make it possible for multinational corporations to pay low wages rely on those economic contributions by women without promoting women's welfare or rights, she says. In addition, Bangladesh and other developing nations have had to put funds toward debt repayment rather than establishing "safety nets" to help women and their families.

Despite its shortcomings, factory work allowed Bangladeshi women to make inroads into the mainstream of society in a country where women often are secluded in the household. When factories close, women lose more than just income.

And they do close, just as they have in the United States, as a result of trade agreements. For example, the 2000 U.S. Trade Development Act, which gave certain export advantages to African and Caribbean nations, spurred a number of multinationals to move clothing factories from Bangladesh to countries such as Lesotho, in a race to the rock bottom of the wage scale.

Ward was particularly concerned about what would happen in Bangladesh after the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Textiles and Clothing expired at the end of 2004. This pact, in effect since 1995, had given Bangladesh some advantages in the garment trade. When the agreement expired, says Ward, "Bangladesh now had to compete against powerhouses like China."

Some feared the collapse of the garment industry in Bangladesh. That has not happened, but many smaller factories have closed. "Unemployment went from zero to thirty in our sample group," says Ward.

Former factory workers have had to remain unemployed, take jobs as servants, incur debt in order to open tiny businesses, or even resort to sex work. Women still doing garment work often find their paychecks shorted or go for long periods without pay. Where they once changed jobs frequently in a (mostly fruitless) effort to get better wages, most are now too afraid of losing their job to attempt switching factories.

Expanding women's employment

Microcredit--the making of small loans that allow poor women to start their own small businesses, such as tea stalls, tailoring shops, or rickshaw rentals--has been widely touted as a solution to the problem of women's poverty in the Third World, and it has become a big business in Bangladesh. These tiny amounts are all a Bangladeshi woman has access to: although women there have a much lower loan default rate than men do, banks seldom lend to them.

Ward is a critic of NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) that have gone into the microcredit business. "NGOs provide education, training, health care, and so forth," she says. "There are some good people doing good things. But many have gone into microcredit because money can be made there. They have lots of overhead--large staffs and huge buildings built on loan interest from these women."

Interest, combined with surcharges and savings provisions mandated by the NGOs, can eat up a third of the loan amount. Borrowers must start repaying loans almost immediately. And women often hold multiple loans from one NGO, or from several, overburdening themselves with debt.

"Microcredit doesn't seem to bring many women out of poverty," says Ward, whose surveys for the NSF project show that women in Dhaka generally don't want these loans. "The women don't want to be indebted," she says. "What they've been telling us is that they'd rather have a job."

Nor does she see the typical NGO training program as much of a solution for women, especially better-educated women. Most of these programs, she says, teach them to make handicrafts, such as candles or embroidered goods, that don't pay well or have a large market.

"We need to generate other types of employment for women," Ward says. To do just that, she launched a school, funded principally by herself and her mother, Patricia Ward, called Nari Jibon (Bangla for "women's lives"). Saleha Parveen, a Bangladeshi woman, is its coordinator.

The idea for Nari Jibon was born when Ward, in Bangladesh doing fieldwork, was introduced to a group of sex workers who'd gotten together to talk about shared problems. Most wanted to do something else with their lives; many had families to support. But "society doesn't give these women alternatives," Ward says.

Geared initially to helping sex workers find other ways of supporting themselves, the school is now attended by between 50 and 70 women and girls from various walks of life, including garment workers and servants. Those who cannot read and write begin with classes in Bangla (only about a third of Bangladeshi women are literate). Some of these women also take classes in tailoring, which is much more lucrative than doing piecework in a sweatshop. Those literate in Bangla take English classes, then may go on to computer or business classes.

The idea is to enable the women to qualify for some jobs traditionally held by men. Some of the students receive stipends for a combination of study and work, such as office or outreach work. Some have already gone on to get office jobs, work as tailors, or open their own businesses--with solid business plans in place.

"I feel we're having a big impact on their lives," says Ward, who hopes the school will serve as a model for NGOs. "Mothers are bringing their daughters. There are some really dedicated young women with progressive attitudes."

Fighting domestic violence

Another of Ward's research projects has tackled the problem of domestic violence head-on. A grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development through the Association Liaison Office for University Cooperation in Development allowed a U.S./Bangladeshi team to survey men and women about attitudes toward domestic violence and to work on strategies to fight the problem.

Ainon Mizan, a researcher with SIUC's Center for Rural Health and Social Service Development, co-directed the project. Originally from Bangladesh, she says that women's organizations offering domestic violence programs face many obstacles.

"The domestic violence problem is not out in the open, and their services are not well publicized," she says. "They worry that if they were more visible, they'll be inundated with cases they have no resources for. They are competing for the same funding.

"One objective of the project was to compile information about existing services in one brochure that NGOs could use. Another was to create a central web site to start linking Bangladeshi programs with programs in the United States serving South Asian women."

The web site is up, and the brochure has been distributed to advocacy groups, legal organizations, crisis centers, and grassroots activists, who will work to share the information with women who can't read. The Bangladeshi media "have only recently started talking about domestic violence," says Rifat Akhter, a graduate student in sociology from Bangladesh who worked on the project, "but they never talk about where women can go for help."

Bangladesh currently has no laws against domestic violence, so Ward and Mizan enlisted SIUC law professor Sheila Simon to consult with Bangladeshi attorneys working for such legislation. Sociology professor Michelle Miller visited shelters for abused women. Saiful Islam, another doctoral student in sociology from Bangladesh, interviewed staff at women's organizations to learn about their operations. And Mahmuda Islam (the Dhaka University sociologist mentioned earlier) visited U.S. programs for abused South Asian immigrants to see how they work with Bangladeshi women.

"Gender role attitudes are very much related to domestic violence rates," says Akhter, who presented the team's survey findings at the American Sociological Association's 2005 international conference. Most Bangladeshi men--and women--condone wife beating as "discipline" for wifely "failures" (such as not serving meals on time, or disobeying husbands). Of all groups interviewed, the team found, female garment workers held the most progressive attitudes about domestic violence, although they still held traditional views about gender roles--perhaps because many are young and still unmarried.

Saiful Islam, whose dissertation is on the anti-domestic violence movement in Bangladesh, discovered that effective partnerships aren't in place to combat the problem, either within Bangladesh or between Bangladeshi and international organizations. That's a real handicap.

"The movement against domestic violence is still in its infancy," he says. "This is such a major issue, one or two organizations alone can't handle it. In many cases victims are suffering needlessly because there aren't enough resources to help."

Another problem, both Islam and Mizan point out, is that available resources are very urban-based. "Almost no domestic violence services exist in rural areas at all," Mizan says.

Akhter's dissertation, funded by an SIUC Dissertation Research Award, will examine how domestic violence rates relate to women's representation in the work force, education levels, and economic indicators in 45 developed and developing nations. When either women or men lose their jobs as a consequence of economic restructuring, domestic violence rates increase, she notes. Violence rates also are high where globalization creates labor inequities--where women work long hours for less pay than men get, or are concentrated into low-paying, less-desirable jobs.

"The global economy empowers some women and disempowers others," she says.

Over the past few years, not just Akhter and Saiful Islam but a number of other students from Bangladesh have come to SIUC to work on master's or doctoral degrees. A grant from the Research Institute for the Study of Man enabled Ward to take several students back to Bangladesh to do fieldwork for their master's and dissertation projects.

Ward herself plans to continue studying women's work histories and developing more job alternatives for disadvantaged women. Despite the summer heat, the periodic flooding, and other hardships, she keeps returning to Bangladesh.

"The people I meet and work with there are incredible human beings," she says.

--by Marilyn Davis, ed.

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