Publication

This paper asks why the garment industry in Bangladesh mainly occupies a female wage labor force. The author acknowledges that extreme poverty and the related dynamic of male unemployment and desertion is responsible for the movement of women into the garments factories. However, rather than being uniformly a response to dire poverty, the paper argues that in some instances garments work provides the means for enhancing personal and/or household economic prospects, while in other cases it provides a measure of economic and social independence for the women concerned.