THE recent report “Whispers to Voices” highlighted the substantial gains in women’s status in Bangladesh over the last few decades. School enrolment of girls now exceeds that of boys’, infant mortality has fallen, gender differences in survival of children have narrowed, fertility has declined dramatically, and women are now more visible in public spaces than they ever were before.
Perhaps the most significant impact of this was described by young girls when they said “being able to speak,” or having a voice has been the most important achievement of their generation.
The report also brought home a sobering truth. Despite so many positive outcomes and despite a significant rise in employment of women in the last decade, women’s labour force participation in Bangladesh is 26 per cent, among the lowest in the world.
To those who know Bangladesh, it seems unbelievable. Are women workers not visible wherever you go — in villages and towns? Yes, they are, and here lies the conundrum. Women are occupied in low-end menial jobs that often do not pay wages. A large proportion report themselves as unpaid “helpers” in household enterprises.
Compared to other South Asian countries, poor uneducated Bangladeshi women reports lower employment rates. This is largely due to the low representation of women in agriculture, compared to neighbouring countries.
Only 59 per cent of Bangladeshi women, as compared to over 74 per cent of Indian, 64 per cent Pakistani and 85 per cent Nepali women, are employed in agriculture. Yet, of those who are employed, the majority works in casual jobs as domestic workers or in agriculture. Women agricultural labourers earn 60-65 per cent of the wages that men do, and statistical decompositions show evidence of wage discrimination.
Perhaps, if there is another earning member in the household, women would rather stay out of a discriminatory labour market. Therefore, continued focus on agricultural productivity and on employment for poor women will be a challenge for Bangladesh in the years to come.
An important corollary is to ensure decent conditions of work and minimum wages in the agricultural as well as the domestic service market.
Women’s employment, however, is not merely a poverty reduction issue, though it has been viewed primarily from that perspective until now. There is a new challenge — one that stems from the gains of girls’ education and from the aspirations of Bangladesh to be a middle-income country.
A middle-income Bangladesh will have to be based more squarely in the manufacturing and services sectors, or a “new economy.” In order to harness the potential of the educated cohort of women for this “new economy,” Bangladesh has to draw women into the workforce.
What will it take to provide educated women entry into the labour force? As a starting point, Bangladesh has to make women’s employment a core growth issue and an avowed macro-level policy goal.
So, while it encourages growth in the manufacturing sector through a number of policies it also has to ensure that new categories of industries hire women. To this end, women need information, contacts, and technical expertise to be able to enter the “new economy.”
However, manufacturing is only a small part of overall employment and, even at high rates of growth in this sector, self-employment will continue to be important. Here, Bangladesh has to make the leap from providing women with credit to making other linkages that ensure their ability to start small businesses that are lucrative enough for them to report themselves employed.
Perhaps one of the reasons that only a negligible proportion of Bangladeshi women report being self-employed in non-farm enterprises is due to their low representation in the sales and service sectors.
One possible reason for this is the high level of perceived insecurity for women in the public domain. No doubt there are also cultural and other barriers, but the perception that the physical environment is insecure can stymie the efforts of some of the most enterprising women.
Here the police, the local administration, and the judiciary all have to take a firm stand. The deterring effect of swift and strong punishment to perpetrators of crimes against women is likely to be salient.
The positive side in Bangladesh, when compared to India and Pakistan, is that education enhances women’s probability of entering the workforce. Clearly, therefore, there is a demand for female labour, and educated women want to enter the labour force. But, once married, women dramatically drop out of work. And since women tend to be married very young, there seems to be only a small window of opportunity in terms of years that educated young women can work. Does it have to be this way, and what does it say to policy makers?
Women’s maternal responsibilities and care-giving role can be strong barriers to employment. In Bangladesh, institutional childcare is practically non-existent. If women’s employment is a policy goal then the country needs adequate support services for women to be able to enter, and to stay in, the workforce.
This includes maternity leave, flexible work-hours and child care arrangements. We welcome the new National Women’s Policy, which proposes extended maternity leave. Now, the task is to turn attention to conditions of work for female entrants into the private sector as well.
Policy is as powerful a tool for governments to enhance women’s labour force participation as it is in other respects. The experience of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in education, fertility and infant mortality shows that clear national vision helped shape positive outcomes.
In OECD countries, tax laws that reward employed women, while also encouraging fertility, have brought about high levels of women’s labour force participation. We argue that, with a clear policy focus, related incentives and support services, women’s employment can rise significantly in Bangladesh.
On the other hand, if Bangladesh does not give educated young women opportunities outside the home, we can expect dejection and adverse impact on social cohesion.
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