Women garment staff on the decline
Image: Collected
Fast automation, wage hikes and complex production process on the garment sector and marriages have narrowed the feminine workers' participation in the apparel industry on Bangladesh, according to a survey.
The analysis showed that the existing ratio of male to female employees in the garment sector is 41.7 to 58.3, which challenged previously established info that women account for up to 80 % of the apparel industry's total workforce.
"Our analysis indicates that girls accounted for 65 per cent of the garment sector's workforce going back few years, but it features dropped to 58.3 % now," said Syed Hasibuddin Hussain, project manager of Mapped in Bangladesh (MiB), an initiative of Brac University.
As of Sunday, the full total number of workers in the export-oriented garment factories stood at 25,62,383, of whom 14,94,011 are actually female.
The survey was conducted in the main export-oriented garment professional cluster zones in Dhaka, Narayanganj, Gazipur and Chattogram, which cover a lot more than 80 % of the industry.
The entire number of garment personnel may increase somewhat during the final stage of the analysis. However, the number of declining gradually, he said.
The wage hike, rapid automation, marital status and Bangladesh's shift to complex garment production are the main reasons for the declining number of female garment workers, who historically carried the country's single greatest export sector going back four decades, Hussain told reporters while sharing the findings at a hotel in Dhaka on Sunday.
Meanwhile, wage hikes and automation are the major causes of the decline found in the sector's overall workforce, said Hussain, who possesses been leading a study team of about 25 people under the MiB project.
Employment found in the sector fell drastically over time as makers started adopting technologies to lessen the expense of production.
In the same way, since Bangladesh is certainly going into high-end garment production, the application of technologies increased, and the number of workers was reduced.
The researchers have been trying to determine the actual number of export-oriented garment factories in the united states since June 2018.
One of the key objectives of the analysis is to see the people, buyers, vendors, the government and suppliers about the export-oriented garment factories of Bangladesh, Hussain said.
Among Bangladesh's major disadvantages is that following the collapse of Rana Plaza found in April 2013, there is no exact data on the country's export-oriented garment factories.
Because of this, the Bangladeshi garment source chain was widely criticised by western consumers following a disaster, he added.
For this reason the MiB project was undertaken by Brac University in collaboration with the Embassy of holland in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Garment Makers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and the Bangladesh Knitwear Suppliers and Exporters Association (BKMEA).
By Sunday, researchers traced 3,223 factories found in four districts. Of these, 1,171 had been in Dhaka, 1,053 in Gazipur, 613 in Narayanganj, and 386 in Chattogram.
Of them, 1,886 are customers of the BGMEA and 512 are customers of the BKMEA. In addition, it determined 574 factories that aren't a member of any of the two associations but are involved in export-oriented garment production.
The garment accessory developing units and export-oriented garment factories found inside country's export processing zones were not contained in the study.
Of the total documented factories, 463 were found to be subcontracting, Hussain added.
Source: https://www.thedailystar.net