Feminised Workforce in Transnational Production: Bangladesh Ready-made Garment Industry

Abstract

This article examines the lived experiences of workers and the organisational practices of a ready-made garment factory. It illuminates the centrality of social reproduction and the unpaid work of poor women of Bangladesh producing commodities that are channelled to core societies. This article demonstrates that women’s responsibility in social reproduction conditions the nature of their paid work, the terms of their employment and the forms of workplace control. Women workers face extremely rigid gender divisions of labour in the sphere of care work within the household and in workplace. Women workers’ unpaid housework reproduces the material bases of global capitalism by intensifying the labour demands on factory workers and the production process. Commodity chains (CC) threaten the productive and reproductive labour of poor women in periphery nations through the implementation of strategies by capitalists in core nations and by local capitalists connected to the CC. This article demonstrates the importance of incorporating class, gender, productive and reproductive labour, as well as households into world-systems analysis.

Keywords

Ready-made garment industry commodity chains social reproduction household unpaid work organisational practices

Introduction

In the past decade, Bangladesh has made headlines with a world record of industrial disasters. In 2013, at least 1,134 people were killed in a building collapse in a town in Bangladesh.²

Anu Muhammad, ‘Wealth and Deprivation: Readymade Garments Industry in Bangladesh’, Economic and Political Weekly 66, no. 34 (2011): 23–27.

Most of the victims were female workers who were producing garments exported to retailers, such as Walmart. These retail companies hire contractors who order factories in Bangladesh to produce clothing according to their specifications. The retailers demand that these overseas factories produce goods at minimal cost. To fulfil the demands, the factories hire workers who work long hours in dangerous conditions and receive below-poverty wages. Eighty per cent of the workers are women. In addition, garment factories in Bangladesh have some of the lowest manufacturing labour costs in the world. The average monthly wage of a typical worker is less than twenty-five euro, which is less than half of the minimum wage in Bangladesh.³

The Guardian, ‘Muhammad Yunus Appeals to West to Help Bangladesh’s Garment Industry’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/12/muhammad-yunus-bangladesh-appeal (accessed 1 July 2013).

In 2013, the minimum monthly wage was US$66, whereas the poverty line income of a family was US$225.⁴

See Anu Muhammad, ‘Workers’ Lives, Walmart’s Pocket: Garments’ Global Chain, from Savar to New York’, Economic and Political Weekly 50, no. 25 (2015), 143–50, 47. In 2013, the minimum wage was 5,300 takas in Bangladesh currency and the family poverty line income was 18,000 takas in Bangladeshi currency.

One day before the building collapsed, the workers found cracks in the building. An engineer reported its possible collapse and demanded its immediate closure. Many workers were reluctant to return to work the next day. However, the factory authority announced that they would penalise the workers for 1 month’s salary if they did not show up.⁵

Dean Nelson, 2013 ‘Bangladesh Building Collapse Kills at Least 82 in Dhaka’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/bangladesh/10014778/Bangladesh-building-collapse-kills-at-least-82-in-Dhaka.html (accessed 24 April 2013).

When the workers returned to work, the building collapsed. An investigation shows that 60 per cent of the buildings where these factories are located are unsafe.⁶

BBC, ‘Bangladesh Factory Collapse’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/22883812 (accessed 13 June 2013).

Such accidents are not uncommon. According to Muhammad, ‘Since the early 1990s, more than two thousand workers, mostly teenage girls, lost their lives in different garment factories in Bangladesh’.⁷

Muhammad, ‘Workers’ Lives, Walmart’s Pocket’, 145.

What accounts for the willingness of ready-made garment (RMG) workers to risk their lives to work for less than half of the minimum wage of Bangladesh? What is the link between the organisation of production and paid work and social reproduction? How is global capital accumulation linked to the production and social reproduction of labour? Using the feminist commodity chain (CC) perspective, I investigate the above questions. I illuminate the centrality of the social reproduction and unpaid work of poor women producing commodities that are channelled to developed countries.

Literature Review

According to the world-systems perspective, the capitalist world economy and globalisation have caused a division of labour between wealthier core countries and poorer periphery countries. This division has caused the prosperity of the core nations and the poverty of the periphery nations. Initially, core–periphery relations emerged in the sixteenth century as a result of a crisis in feudal European societies. Core–periphery relations were later expanded to the rest of the world, and researchers added the semi-periphery countries into the world systems’ three-tiered structure. Semi-periphery countries are defined as a mix of core and peripheral countries.

The world-systems perspective defines globalisation as the effects of structural adjustment, economic restructuring and the extension of productive processes beyond national boundaries and the functional integration of production by multinational corporations (MNCs). Globalisation reorganised older processes of production that were dominated by national corporations.

Based on the ideas of the world-systems theory, the CC perspective was introduced in the 1990s.⁸

Jennifer Bair, ‘Editor’s Introduction: Commodity Chains in and of the World System’, Journal of World System Research 20, no. 1 (2014): 1–10.

Multiple terms are used to understand the relationships between core and periphery nations, such as CC and commodity web. These terms will be used interchangeably because the differences among these terms are not significant.⁹

Ibid.

CC researchers examined global inequalities in terms of differential access to markets and resources. They explored production countries’ imports and exports in the contexts of macro-institutional forces, such as the rules of the World Bank, global governance structures and nation states. Researchers perceived CC as the principle strategy by which workers of poorer nations are integrated into the world economy, which could represent a step towards development.¹⁰

C. Martin Webber and Patrick Labaste, Building Competitiveness in Africa’s Agriculture: A Guide to Value Chain Concepts and Applications (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2010). doi:10.1596/978-0-8213-7952-3.

International trade plays a crucial role in global stratification by shaping the processes of capital and power accumulation within the world-systems framework.¹¹

Robert Denemark and Barry Gills, ‘Reorienting the World System’, Journal of World-Systems Research 21, no. 1 (2014): 193–202.

MNCs overcome the protective measures used by nations to limit international trade. MNCs enhance their competitive advantage by using cheap labour from poorer nations and by increasing industrial flexibility. Researchers have identified that the forms of globalised capital accumulation have changed the relations between nation-states and the global economy; the relations between local communities, states and globalised markets; and gender relations in the production process.¹²

Valentine Moghadam, ‘Gender and Globalization: Female Labor and Women’s Mobilization’, Journal of World-System Research 5, no. 2 (1999): 367–88.

This international division of labour caused by globalisation and the relocation of manufacturing to the Global South produced a widespread feminisation of labour.¹³

Guy Standing, ‘Global Feminization through Flexible Labor: A Theme Revisited’, World Development 27, no. 3 (1999): 583–602.

The qualities most valued in export-processing workers by industry owners are docility, dexterity, disposability and cheapness, which are the qualities associated with poor women of the Global South.¹⁴

Melissa Wright, Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism (New York: Routledge, 2006).

Researchers illustrate the ways in which gender matters to the internationalisation of production.¹⁵

Maria Fernández-Kelly, For We Are Sold, I and My People: Women and Industry in Mexico’s Frontier (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1983); Leslie Salzinger, Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico’s Global Factories (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003).

In some cases, nation-states and MNCs have intensified gender ideologies, and, in other cases, they have deconstructed ideologies depending on what works the best for the states and the MNCs’ pursuit of profit maximisation.

The transnational feminist approach indicates that the exploitation of women at a global scale is caused by the economic and geopolitical regimes of neoliberal global governance. To end the exploitation of women in poorer nations, we need to understand the role of global capitalism and its interaction with the patriarchal family structure.¹⁶

Lynne Phillips and Sally Cole, ‘Feminist Flows, Feminist Fault Lines: Women’s Machineries and Women’s Movement in Latin America’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 35 no. 1 (2009): 185–211.

Feminists argued that the CC perspective shifted the world-systems perspective’s focus regarding how commodity production networks create an unequal world system to how CC help economic actors to ‘facilitate development at a unit level’.¹⁷

Bair, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, 2.

Both the world-systems and the CC perspectives failed to focus on the gendered dimension of the exploitation of poorer nations by core nations in their analysis.¹⁸

Ibid.

Feminists question the distinction between commodity production and social reproduction. They urge the world-systems and the CC researchers to consider the role of multiple forms of women’s formal and informal work in the world system.¹⁹

Wilma Dunaway, ‘Introduction’, in Gendered Commodity Chains: Seeing Women’s Work and Households in Global Production, ed. Wilma Dunaway (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 1–24.

Marxist feminists emphasised the centrality of gender, households and social reproduction in world systems.²⁰

Maria Mies, Veronica Bennholdt-Thomsen, and Claudia von Werlhof, Women: The Last Colony (London: Zed Books, 1988).

They underscored the relationship between women’s paid and unpaid work and households and their effects on global capital accumulation.²¹

Dunaway, ‘Introduction’.

Collins introduced feminist CC as a method of analysis that can document

not only the labor intensity of the production process, the number of jobs created, and the gender and ethnic composition of the workforce but also the nature of the labor process, the forms of workplace control and the ways in which the needs of firms for a particular kind of labor at a particular price intersect with local social relations of gender and ethnicity’.²²

Jane Collins, ‘A Feminist Approach to Overcoming the Closed Boxes of the Commodity Chain’, in Gendered Commodity Chains: Seeing Women’s Work and Households in Global Production, ed. Wilma Dunaway (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 27–37, 32.

Feminist CC help us to see how the global capitalist accumulation of commodities is intertwined with the social reproduction of labour and capital.²³

Priti Ramamurthy, ‘Feminist Commodity Chain Analysis: A Framework to Conceptualize Value and Interpret Perplexity’, in Gender Commodity Chains: Seeing Women’s Work and Households in Global Production, ed. Wilma Dunaway (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 38–52.

Clelland demonstrated the importance of considering the ‘dark value of the unpaid work of women within households, which provides a hidden subsidy to CC. The dark value is the unrecorded value of cheap labor, labor reproduction and ecological externalities’.²⁴

Donald A. Clelland, ‘Unpaid Labor as Dark Value in Global Commodity Chains’, in Gendered Commodity Chains: Seeing Women’s Work and Households in Global Production, ed. Wilma Dunaway (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 72–87, 82.

The extraction and transfer of the dark value from the periphery to the core help to maintain global capitalism. CC and households are connected, and the survival of households and the world economy depends on women’s invisible work.²⁵

Wilma Dunaway, The Semi-proletarian Households over the Long Duree of the Modern World-System (School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech, 2013).

Both what happens within households that supply the labour force for CC and the role women play in household consumption patterns affect the supply of labour in the commodity web.²⁶

Laura Shepherd and Lucy Ferguson, ‘Gender, Governance and Power: Finding the Global at the Local Level’, Globalization 8, no. 2 (2011): 127–33.

There is a large body of research on the gender consequences of globalisation in South Asia. Researchers explained how the trade liberalisation policy of India negatively affected women’s relative wage compared to men. Women have less bargaining power relative to men due to the lack of implementation of labour standards; in addition, employers and unions prefer to hire male workers.²⁷

Nidhiya Menon and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, ‘International Trade and Gender Wage Gap: New Evidence from India’s Manufacturing Sector’, World Development 37, no. 5 (2009): 965–81.

Rahman found that although globalisation created five times more jobs for women in the RMG industry of Bangladesh, the working condition of female workers is worse than the working condition of males and that the gender gap in wage is wide. He attributes the wage gap to different levels of skills between female and male workers, different levels of education and the different lengths of time female and male workers spend at work.²⁸

Mohammad Mafizur Rahman, ‘Trade Liberalization and Gender Gap: Bangladesh Experience’, The Journal of Applied Business and Economics 16, no. 2 (2014): 57–69.

Rahman failed to take into account the patriarchal structural expectation for why women, more than men, are involved in housework.

There is a body of research on the gender consequences of the globalisation of the assembly line in Bangladesh. According to Muhammad, there was a dramatic change in women’s paid employment with the rise of RMG factories, as these women were perceived as low-cost labour that would allow the industry to compete in the global market.²⁹

Muhammad, ‘Wealth and Deprivation’.

Kabeer demonstrated that Bangladeshi women workers in the textile industry challenged the norm of seclusion in the private sphere of home as they participated in the public life of work.³⁰

Naila Kabeer, The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka (London: Verso, 2000).

However, by overemphasising the empowerment of women workers, Kabeer underplayed the oppressive nature of the factory floor and the sense of powerlessness women workers felt in their lives.

Siddiqi argued that although the working conditions of these factories are not ideal, the employment opportunity this sector has created for women has opened up their visibility in the public space.³¹

Dina Siddiqi, ‘Do Bangladeshi Factory Workers Need Saving? Sisterhood in the Post-sweatshop Era’, Feminist Review, 91 (2009): 154–74.

However, she erroneously generalised the higher level of sexual harassment female workers experienced in smaller factories when compared with larger factories located in export processing zones. Smaller garment factories may not necessarily be more sexually exploitative than larger factories owned by foreign buyers. To understand the complexities of exploitation, we must hear the lived experiences of these workers. In addition, the existing research on the Bangladesh garment industry was conducted in the 1990s and early 2000s. Work arrangements are different after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building, an incident that forced many factories to close down. Thus, the experiences of the workers are likely to be different now.

Using the feminist CC perspective, this article examines the lived experiences of workers and the organisational practices of an RMG factory called FB Fashion. It illuminates the centrality of social reproduction and the unpaid work of poor women producing commodities that are channelled to core societies.

First, I provide a brief description of the history of the RMG industry in Bangladesh. Next, the method used to collect the data is discussed. In the following section, the findings of this research are discussed. In the last section, a discussion is offered, and conclusions are drawn.

History of the Export-oriented RMG Industry of Bangladesh

The export-oriented garment industry of Bangladesh emerged dramatically in the late 1970s with the introduction of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) in 1974. Some developing countries experienced quantitative restrictions on the number of RMG produced in these countries that could be exported to developed countries. A few entrepreneurs from developing countries went to quota-free countries to set up subcontracting relationships.³²

Muhammad, ‘Workers’ Lives, Walmart’s Pocket’.

Bangladesh’s cheap labour, along with its quota-free status until 2005, made it an attractive investment opportunity for investors. This coincided with trade liberalisation policies introduced by the government of Bangladesh in the early 1980s that replaced earlier protective measures. By the end of the 1970s, war, famine, political instability, the decline of the jute industry and a food shortage left the country devastated.³³

Naila Kabeer and Simeen Mahmud, ‘Rags, Riches and Women Workers: Export Oriented Garment Manufacturing in Bangladesh’, in Chains of Fortune: Linking Women Producers and Workers with Global Market, ed. Commonwealth Secretariat (London: Marlborough House, 2004), 133–62.

These forces increased Bangladesh’s dependence on foreign investment, as structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) under the purview of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank forced Bangladesh to further open its economy and compete directly with other developing countries exporting RMG. The SAPs led to the closure of many large companies. Millions of people lost their jobs as a result.³⁴

Muhammad, ‘Workers’ Lives, Walmart’s Pocket’.

In 1982, a new export-led growth strategy was introduced by Bangladesh to attract foreign direct investors. The strategy was led by the private sector. Export processing zones were established. Factories located in these zones were directly connected to foreign buyers and had better wage regulations and better work conditions. In the 1990s, as the demands from foreign buyers rose, more incentives were introduced by the government, and there was a dramatic increase in the number of privately owned factories across the country: ‘95% of (garment) firms are locally owned, private limited companies’.³⁵

Kabeer and Mahmud, ‘Rags, Riches and Women Workers’, 137.

These small factories use buildings that were built very rapidly, have no direct connection to buyers and subcontract work on tight margin to other smaller firms.³⁶

Bloomberg, ‘At Least 70 People Killed as a Building in Bangladesh Collapses’, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-24/at-least-70-people-killed-as-a-building-in-bangladesh-collapses.htm (accessed 18 July 2013).

The export-oriented garment industry of Bangladesh is the most important industry in terms of employment. European and American imports of RMGs are worth forty-six billion US dollars a year, and approximately 60 per cent of the RMGs imported by America and the European Union are made in Bangladesh.³⁷

McKinsey, ‘Potentials for Rapid Growth of Bangladesh’s RMG Industry’, www.mckinsey.de/sites/www.mckinsey.de/files/2011_McKinsey_Bangladesh.pdf (accessed 4 March 2015).

Garments account for 80 per cent of Bangladesh’s manufacturing exports.³⁸

The World Bank, World Development Indicators (Washington, DC), http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators/wdi-2012 (accessed 18 March 2014).

The industry accounts for 13 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), a dramatic increase from 3 per cent in 1991. It has created four million jobs.³⁹

Muhammad, ‘Workers’ Lives, Walmart’s Pocket.

The value of RMG exports was a little over US$4 billion in 1999. In 1999, the industry was worth approximately US$2 billion based on its economic activities.⁴⁰

Debapriya Bhattacharya and Mustafizur Rahman, ‘Female Employment under Export Propelled Industrialization: Prospect for Internalizing Global Opportunities in the Bangladesh Apparel Sector’, UNRISD Occasional Paper No. 10 (Geneva: UNRISD, 1999).

In 2013, the exports from the RMG industry were worth US$20 billion.⁴¹

Muhammad, ‘Workers’ Lives, Walmart’s Pocket’.

The RMG sector is very much unregulated. Domestic entrepreneurs failed to develop the textile industry. The cost of imported raw material and insufficient loans from foreign investors has made the RMG sector dependent on foreign capital. This dependency and irregularity require the continued flow of finances and technology, which makes it vulnerable to the global economy.

Method

The interview data were collected in Bangladesh in 2014. I selected FB Fashion, a factory located in Dhaka. About 80 per cent of all RMG industries are located in Dhaka city.⁴²

Ismail Hossain, Golam Mathbor and Renata Semenza, ‘Feminization and Labor Vulnerability in Global Manufacturing Industries: Does Gendered Discourse Matter?’, Asian Social Work and Policy Review, 7 (2013): 197–212.

There were 4,500 garment factories in Bangladesh in 2011. Many of these factories were subcontractors to bigger factories.⁴³

Muhammad, ‘Wealth and Deprivation’.

FB Fashion represents the nation’s privately owned, small and low-quality factories. According to a manager at FB Fashion, it represents more than 75 per cent of the nation’s garment factories. It subcontracts garment production on a tight margin to other garment factories. FB Fashion has no direct connection to foreign buyers. The factory assembles garments that are exported to foreign countries, although it occasionally produces garments for the domestic market. A flexible workforce frees the owner from providing employee benefits, which lowers the production cost. There are 600 workers, 82 per cent of whom are females. The factory has 200 automatic sewing machines. With the exception of the quality-control staff and supervisors, the workers have 0–5 years of schooling. Most of the quality-control staffs have 8 years of schooling, and the tailors have 0–5 years of schooling. All the maintenance workers, tailors and ironmen are male. Ninety per cent of the operators are female, and all the helpers are female. All but four of the supervisors are male. All but one of the quality-control staff is male. The factory has been operational since 2006. The factory requires workers to produce at least 200 finished pieces of garments per hour. Labour union organisers are not allowed to talk to the workers. The owner of the factory does not provide formal letters of appointment to the workers. Base pay is US$35 per month for helpers and US$55 for operators. However, this pay depends on whether the workers fulfil the quota of 200 pieces of garments per hour. Overtime pay is 30 US cents per hour. There is no medical insurance, paid sick leave or family leave for the workers. Female workers receive 1 month of unpaid maternity leave. FB Fashion competes with other garment factories for workers. To ensure a healthy flow of workers, the company has chosen policies that are different from other factories. For example, unlike many factories where the owners owe their workers several months’ back wages, all the workers at FB Fashion are paid in a timely fashion. The factory provides all the employees with a free breakfast at sunset four times during the month of Ramadan. The cost of food for breakfast is beyond the means of the workers. The factory allows its employees a 15-minute paid break for evening prayer during the month of Ramadan. All the workers receive Ramadan gifts.

I interviewed two managers, two factory supervisors and sixty workers. The managers and supervisors were male. The female workers who were interviewed ranged in age from 14 to 40 years. They had worked in various garment factories for an average of 6 years. Thirty-eight of the respondents were helpers. The mean age of the helpers was about 16 years. Twenty-two of the respondents were sewing machine operators (operators). The mean age of the operators was 22 years. Most of the helpers were not married, and all but one of the operators were married. All the married operators had at least one child. All of the names of the respondents and the factories used in this article are pseudonyms.

Through repeated in-depth interviews, the respondents were asked the following questions: Why did they decide to work in the factory? What major life events have occurred while working at the factory? How does their work affect their family life and vice versa? What specific work-related problems have they experienced in the factory? The respondents were interviewed at their homes or locations of their choice. The interview data illuminated how gender, inequality and empowerment are constituted on the shop floor for these workers.

According to the managers, although the company has written documents of organisational rules, the managers do not follow these rules because the factory is highly vulnerable to decisions made by the principal companies and to frequent market fluctuation. They absorb the uncertainties of the volatile market by using informal rules within the factory. Therefore, I collected the organisational data by interviewing the managers.

Findings

Intersection of Production and Social Reproduction

Social reproduction is defined as ‘the material practices through which people reproduce themselves on a daily and generational basis and through which the social relations and material bases of capitalism renewed’.⁴⁴

Cindi Katz, ‘Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction’, Antipode 33 no. 4 (2001): 708–27, 09.

It is mainly the women in the households who shoulder the burden of social reproduction and for which they are not compensated. However, it is precisely through the unpaid reproductive labour of women in families that labourers who are connected to the world system are produced.⁴⁵

Collins, ‘A Feminist Approach’.

This section explains how the reproductive labour of women workers in FB Fashion is affected by world systems and how productive and reproductive labours are structurally connected.

All the respondents mentioned that they have no power to set the length of their working hours to meet their preferences. According to a helper:

The management forces us to work overtime without pay. The factory set the standard to produce the highest number of pieces of garments per day. Each worker is required to fulfil the target number of garments or quota each day. Overtime cash is not paid unless we meet the daily quota. In addition, when the finished garments do not satisfy the needs of the buyers of the garments, they are returned to FB Fashion for alteration. We work on the alterations without pay. I work sixteen hours a day. I go home at midnight, eat and sleep for five hours, and come back to work at eight in the morning. I am happy that my mother cooks and takes care of my laundry so I am able to come to the factory. My family depends on my income.

The managers said that the workers produce garments that do not pass the foreign buyers’ quality-control check; therefore, the workers must work without pay. All the respondents complained that although the quota system is set for both male and female workers, the managers were more flexible for male workers than for female workers; they specifically mentioned the hard tailors’ and ironmen’s tasks. A manager explains:

We work in a very competitive business environment. With tight delivery schedules and with the very little profit we make, we cannot be flexible about the breaks everybody wants. Men need more breaks than women because men are always on their feet as they are ironing, tailoring, supervising and checking the quality of the finished products. The operators sit in their chairs all day.

This manager understated the extraction of the hidden labour surpluses produced by the female workers and their families. Differential treatment of female and male workers is a central way of organising work in factories. The economic compulsion of women workers and the tension between paid and unpaid work are linked to the organisation of production and labour processes.

The centrality of the gendered division of work limits women’s entry into paid work, the nature of their paid work and the terms and conditions of their employment. This is evident in the absence of female tailors, ironmen and maintenance workers, and there are almost no female supervisors in FB Fashion. It also reflects the company’s hidden policy of hiring only males for these positions. The managers’ comments reflect their stereotyping that men are better than women at working as tailors, ironmen, maintenance workers and supervisors. A male manager explains:

Tailors have the most important role in production. Any mistake they might make would destroy our business. Tailors require technical skill, which women do not have. Maintenance work requires lifting heavy tools. Women are not physically strong for maintenance work. Ironmen deal is with electric iron. Electricity is a masculine thing.

The manager’s comments contradict the fact that many female operators had significant experience as tailors in their homes. Although these women applied for a tailor position, they were hired as operators. Women’s workforce participation faces an extremely stable gender division of labour in RMG factories.

Economic survival is the key to understanding why the women workers at FB Fashion comply with the excessive mandatory hours of work without overtime pay. All the respondents mentioned that they never complained because complaints may carry a credible risk of discharge, which could mean starvation.

The seasonal nature of garment production was also responsible for the workers’ compliance with mandatory work hour requirements. The respondents were unsure if the factory owner would allow them to continue to work when the high season for production was over. Moreover, the respondents were aware that employment in export-oriented garment factories was vulnerable to fluctuations in the international demand for garments produced in Bangladesh due to new safety requirements imposed on the owners of garment factories by Western retailers after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building. The constant threat of layoffs was correlated to why the workers settled for hours that they did not prefer. However, this decision was shaped by their income, their responsibility for social reproduction, organisational practices and market volatility. Saima, a helper, noted:

My husband abandoned me and my daughter after he lost his job. My daughter was in high school at that time. I started to work at FB Fashion. My daughter continued her education. I borrowed 10,000 takas from my relative last year. I paid my daughter’s education expenses with that money. I am supposed to return that money. Now is the high season of production because of the Islamic religious festival, and I am working eighteen hours a day so that I can pay off the loan. Within a month when this season is over, I may not continue to work overtime. As a single parent, I am responsible for taking care of my daughter, the household chores and factory work.

Women’s responsibility for social reproduction shapes the nature of their paid work and the terms and conditions of their employment. Saima’s daily struggle to take care of herself, her child and her household, for which she is not compensated, continues to reproduce the social relations and material foundations of global capitalism. Saima’s comments demonstrate her material practices and aspirations for her daughter’s educational attainment and her attempt to reproduce them on a daily and generational basis. Although her working condition may be oppressive, her work and independent decision-making ability gave her the opportunity to continue sending her daughter to school. The large-scale employment opportunities for women created by the garment sector may also be related to women’s educational attainment.⁴⁶

Rachel Heath and Mushfiq Mobarak, Research Briefs in Economic Policy: Manufacturing Growth and the Lives of Bangladeshi Women (Washington, DC: CATO Institute, 2014). http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/20140916_heath-mobarak.pdf (accessed 18 February 2015).

Almost all the respondents with school-age children and siblings mentioned that their children and siblings are enrolled in school. The respondents mentioned that without higher education, their children would end up in dead-end jobs similar to their own. It is precisely through the productive and reproductive labour of these workers that future workers are reproduced to meet the needs of global capitalism.

Researchers have demonstrated the effects of world systems on the decision-making capabilities of women within households.⁴⁷

Daniela Danna, ‘Population Dynamics and World-Systems Analysis’, Journal of World Systems Research 20 no. 2 (2014): 207–28.

Although the women of FB Fashion were not happy about the excessive hours of work, they mentioned that their income has boosted their self-confidence. Nipa’s husband brought home a co-wife after the birth of Nipa’s second daughter. Her husband routinely hit Nipa. Three months after he introduced the co-wife, Nipa started to work in a garment factory. She makes US$55 per month with overtime pay. She lives in a separate house with her daughters. For the first time in her life, Nipa challenged her husband about her physical abuse. She sends her daughters to school. Her older daughter takes care of the household chores and looks after Nipa’s younger daughter; these are activities that are commonly ascribed to women. Without her daughter’s help with housework, Nipa could not have continued her paid work.

The respondents’ economic independence and the material practices through which they reproduce themselves condition their decision to continue their paid work. It is precisely through Nipa’s daughter’s unpaid household reproductive labour that Nipa is connected to the world system of the transnational production of RMG. Therefore, it is important to consider how both commodity production and social reproduction are closely connected to world systems and the generation of surplus value.

In conclusion, the organisational practices of unpaid excessive work are class and gender based. A worker’s decision to comply with excessive work is based on market volatility, the availability of cheap labour, the demands of the owner and, most importantly, on her material practices through which she reproduces her and her dependents within the household. Capitalists implement surplus-extraction strategies in their CC. Workers are forced to comply with these strategies. Women’s responsibility in social reproduction conditions the nature of their paid work and the terms of their employment.

Disposable Labour and the Restructuring of Reproductive Labour

Wright argued that the disposability and cheap labour of poor women in the Global South are the qualities most valued by MNC owners.⁴⁸

Wright, ‘Disposable Women’.

The collapse of the Rana Plaza building in 2013 was followed by Western retailers requiring that inspections be conducted of the labour safety conditions in the garment factories. The failure of many factories to comply with the requirements led to the closure of many of these factories and the widespread retrenchment of workers in the garment sector of Bangladesh. These changes had differential impacts on male and female RMG factory workers. Most of the retrenched workers were females. Eight of the respondents were retrenched from factories where they used to work, and they were later hired by FB Fashion. According to these respondents, the practice of retrenchment was gendered in regard to the phases of retrenchment. Farida, a 22-year-old female operator, explained the retrenchment process used by Sadia Fashion, the factory from which she was laid off.

Most of the first 200 retrenched workers were underage female helpers. The next 100 retrenched female operators were married. Only a few male workers lost their job at this phase. The rest of the workers, both male and female, were laid off during the last phase of retrenchment when the factory went out of business.

The owner of the factory used the cultural ideology that women workers were the secondary earners of the family who had male kin to support them in times of financial crisis. This assumption contradicts the fact that many women workers were the sole providers for their family, particularly due to large-scale loss of employment among men in the agricultural sector. This assumption also conflicts with the employer’s preference for low-paid unskilled female labour, which led to the substitution of men for women. Gender differences were created and reinforced through the company’s practices. Zorina explained how her supervisor justified the decision regarding her retrenchment. The supervisor’s comment reiterated the cultural stereotypical roles of the male breadwinner and female caregiver. A 19-year-old helper stated:

My supervisor told me ‘You experienced difficulties in your family while working here. Your children were sick, and you were not there. Now that you are laid off, it is your time to resume your primary role as mother. Besides, your husband has a job’.

The manager’s comments indicated how ‘local’ Bangladeshi gender ideology is incorporated into the arena of global CC. In Collins’s words, this helps us to understand ‘how corporations make use of local inequalities to reduce the costs of labor’.⁴⁹

Collins, ‘A Feminist Approach’, 31.

The manager delegated the reproductive labour of care work to an underprivileged, laid-off woman whom he perceived as ‘naturally’ capable of performing care work. When the factory’s pursuit of profit maximisation was affected by a crisis, the management restructured reproductive labour along the categories of class and gender by intensifying gender ideologies.

In conclusion, gender differences are reinforced by a company’s retrenchment practices. When capital accumulation was negatively affected by an internal crisis caused by industrial accidents in Bangladesh, the managers of companies in the RMG industry used gender ideology to dispose of cheap female labour. The centrality of the gendered division of work and women’s responsibility for social reproduction condition the forms of workplace control.

Sick Leave, Reproductive Labour and Commodity Production

There is no paid sick leave for workers at FB Fashion, which leads to high turnover rates. However, the decision of workers to continue working in a given factory in the absence of sick leave varies according to the workers’ level of poverty, age, perception of job security and responsibilities for social reproduction and to cuts in social safety nets. An underage, low-income helper who was the sole earner of a family, for example, suffered from a feeling of job insecurity more than an adult operator who supported only herself. Despite her illness, the helper who supported her family did not quit work in the midst of her illness. Aireen explained why she continued working in a factory irrespective of her illness:

A few months ago I got a tumour in my wrist. I am in lot of pain. I get a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute bathroom breaks. I work seven days a week. I asked my supervisor for a few days off so I could rest. My supervisor denied it. But I cannot quit. I am the only provider for my family. My mother said that she would take care of all household chores so I do not have to do housework when I get home. I go home after work and rest. After the Rana Plaza disaster, factory owners are not hiring children because the foreign buyers do not want that. If I quit this job, other factories may not hire me, and I would starve to death.

The absence of a company sick leave policy and the long hours of work are associated with high rates of domestic violence. While an increasing number of women are entering the workforce, the traditional patriarchal culture in Bangladesh mandates that they also perform their domestic role within the household. Long hours of work create stress within the family. For example, Salma worked in a factory for 16 hours a day. She lived with her unemployed husband and was expected to prepare food for the family. About a year ago, while Salma was working in a factory, she was hit by her husband because she failed to serve him his dinner. Salma was hospitalised for 15 days. When she returned to the factory, she was not allowed to work. Salma’s supervisor mentioned that most of these workers are from a lower class background. Domestic abuse is a regular characteristic of their lives. One manager stated, ‘If we considered domestic abuse as a valid reason for absence, my factory would go bankrupt’.

Summing up, the lack of sick leave and the decision of workers to continue to work when they are sick intersect with the age of workers, women’s role in social reproduction within households and market vulnerability. The capitalists’ push to cut workers’ rights leaves poor working women vulnerable to abuse by their family. The abuse is rooted in patriarchal expectations regarding women’s responsibilities for social reproduction within households. Women workers face extremely rigid gender divisions of labour in the sphere of care work within the household. The centrality of the gendered division of reproductive work limits women’s entry into paid work.

Losers and Winners of World Systems

Dunaway explained how commodity production ‘absorbs, pollutes, or destroys too much of society’s ecological and social resources’,⁵⁰

Dunaway, ‘Introduction’, 5.

which hurts the livelihood of workers in periphery nations. When commodity production damaged the livelihood of the workers and there was no safety net available for them, life-threatening factory building safety was not considered a pressing problem by the respondents. Respondents mentioned that factory building safety is a concern; however, when compared with other everyday problems they experience, such as being paid in a timely fashion, commuting to work and having a day care facility within the factory, building safety is not a pressing issue. After the Rana Plaza disaster, larger factories introduced evacuation training for workers in case of accidents in the factory. However, smaller factories do not have any training programmes for workers. The respondents did not think that this was very important. One respondent mentioned:

Working in a safe place is a basic human right. But there are thousands of garment factories in Dhaka. Not all the buildings will collapse. What makes me nervous is whether or not I will see my children, who I leave home alone, after I return home. We need a day care facility within the factory where we spend sixteen hours a day. Once in a while my mother takes care of my children so I can focus on my factory work.

Respondents minimised their concerns about dangerous work conditions and referred instead to problems associated with the long hours spent commuting to their jobs. A helper explained her experiences:

I do not depend on public transportation to commute to work because the time needed to commute to the factory is unpredictable due to traffic jams. So, when I was working in the previous factory I used to walk to the factory. One day a car hit me. I lost consciousness and was hospitalised for two months. The factory management did not allow me to continue to work. After I was fired, my sister became the sole earner for the family. She was a helper in the same factory where I was working. I took care of all the housework after I was fired. That helped my sister to work overtime and support us.

In summary, although the respondents consider building safety a concern, building safety is not considered a pressing issue compared to other daily problems. The respondents’ unpaid housework reproduces the material bases of global capitalism by intensifying the labour demands on factory workers and the production process. What the respondents do within their households affects the supply of labour in the global CC.

Disruption of Households, CC and Reproductive Work

Dunaway explained that world systems transfer production costs from core nations to the semi-proletarian households of periphery countries. She defined a household as ‘a unit which members inequitably pool and redistribute resources, and survival strategies that are grounded in both unpaid and paid (non-waged and waged) income sources’.⁵¹

Wilma A. Dunaway, ‘Through the Portal of Household: Conceptualizing Women’s Subsidies to Commodity Chains’, in Gendered Commodity Chains: Seeing Women’s Work and Households in Global Production, ed. Wilma Dunaway (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 55–72, 57.

Capital accumulation is based on the disruption of the structure of these households, which adversely affects women who bear the lion’s share of unpaid reproductive labour. This section explains the relationship between the disruptions of households, the family leave policy of FB Fashion and women’s unpaid reproductive labour. Many of the respondents mentioned that they migrated from villages to Dhaka after the disruption of their family. A rapid decline in the agricultural sector resulted in a greater rate of unemployment among men. In addition, the SAPs caused many large industries to close, leading to millions of industrial male workers losing their jobs.⁵²

Muhammad, ‘Workers’ Lives, Walmart’s Pocket’.

The inability of the government to provide social services to the citizens consequently forced men to abandon their families. This cultural climate left abandoned women with the ultimate responsibility for their family. Simultaneously, the availability of garment jobs requiring cheap female labour pushed many rural women into the paid labour force in cities. The migration of women from villages to cities cut them off from larger kinship circles. The excessive hours of work had detrimental effects on single-parent, poor female workers with underage children. FB Fashion does not have a family leave policy. The lack of adult supervision of the underage children of the workers and the lack of family friendly workplace policies appeared to be major problems for many of the respondents. The respondents mentioned that in the absence of an adult in the family when they are at work, they depend on strangers or leave their children home alone. Their children are stolen by strangers who are connected to organised crime. Maleka described how her 6-year-old daughter was lost:

I started to work at FB Fashion after my husband abandoned me and my daughter. I worked as a helper. There was no one in my family to take care of my daughter. For a few weeks I left my daughter with my neighbour. After that I failed to go to work for a week. My supervisor allowed me to bring pile of garments home the following week to cut the hanging threads. I was not paid for this week. Later, a woman in my slum agreed to take care of my daughter. This allowed me to go to the factory. In a few days, she and my daughter disappeared from the slum.

Maleka’s story echoes feminists concerns about the role of households and the effects of the intersection of class and gender in global capital accumulation. As a new entrant in the paid labour force from a lower-class background, Maleka had to negotiate her care work responsibility within the household, for which she had to pay a high price. Maleka’s unpaid helper’s work at home also demonstrates a hidden form of the feminisation of surplus labour outside the formal market that is extracted by FB Fashion.

Unpaid care work responsibilities within households are an additional stress many poor women workers experience. Many of the respondents with young children mentioned that the lack of family leave and their absence from home have detrimental effects on their children. Many children die. Rokeya described her story when her 2-month-old son passed away:

I could not breast feed my baby one month after he was born because I returned to work. I left him with my mother. In a few weeks he had diarrhoea. I could not take him to a doctor because by the time I returned home at midnight, the doctor’s office was closed. When my son was sick, I asked for a few days break. My supervisor granted me one day of leave. But it was too late. My son passed away early in the morning before I could take him to the doctor.

Commodity chains threaten the productive and reproductive labour of poor women in periphery nations through the implementation of strategies by capitalists in core nations and by local capitalists connected to the CC. Women’s unpaid care work responsibilities shape the terms and conditions of their employment.

Discussion and Conclusion

The world-systems perspective, which could have helped in identifying the impacts of the feminisation of the global workforce on women’s well-being, failed to study the effects of the feminisation of the workforce on women. The business school model that focuses on the productivity, economic growth and efficiency of world systems dominates the research on the dynamics of world systems. Consequently, according to Bair, world systems and CC were perceived as ‘potential pathways for development or upward mobility’ for periphery societies.⁵³

Bair, ‘Editor’s Introduction’, 1.

The social impacts of globalisation on women in periphery countries have been ignored. In this research, I demonstrate the importance of incorporating class, gender, productive and reproductive labour and households into world-systems analysis.

Hopkins and Wallerstein indicated that workers’ households ‘routinely produce real surplus, which is in fact, fed right into the world-economy’.⁵⁴

Terence K. Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘Patterns of Development of the Modern World-System’, Review 1 no. 2 (1977): 11–45, 60.

Subsequent scholars of the world-systems perspective did not follow Hopkins and Wallerstein in advocating the close connection between the production of a commodity and the social reproduction of labour and capital within households. I demonstrate the centrality of households and social reproduction in world systems by emphasising the close connection between the paid and unpaid labour of poor female factory workers in Bangladesh.

Capital accumulation through CC is based on the disruption of the structure of the households of poor women who bear the lion’s share of unpaid reproductive labour.⁵⁵

Dunaway, ‘Through the Portal of Household’.

I demonstrated how decreasing opportunities for household survival led to the integration of poor female factory workers in Bangladesh into the world economy.

According to the CC perspective, different actors in the chains benefit to some extent from the processes of producing, extracting and transferring commodities. Increased globalisation leads to the higher integration of countries into the global economy, which lowers the poverty rates of peripheral countries.⁵⁶

Andreas Bergh and Therese Nilsson, ‘Is Globalization Reducing Absolute Poverty?’ Development 62 (2014): 42–61.

In contrast to the CC perspective’s assumption, I demonstrate that the benefit that a consumer in a core nation enjoys by paying approximately twenty US dollars to buy a T-shirt is not comparable to the benefit enjoyed by the producer of that T-shirt who makes less than one dollar a day. Unlike the consumer in the core nation, the producer remains at the bottom of the chain. The primary beneficiary of this product is the consumer in the core nation at the upper end of the chain.

The RMG industry in Bangladesh focused on the short-term reduction of labour costs by forcing workers to work at a very fast pace. The women were forced to work without pay and without breaks. Economic survival is the key to understanding why these workers complied with the excessive hours of work without pay. Women pay some of the highest costs of capitalist expansion. By performing a gendered analysis of the CC framework through the study of women in a garment factory in Bangladesh, I demonstrate the tension between paid work and social reproduction. The centrality of the gendered division of work and women’s responsibility for social reproduction limits not only women’s entry into paid work but also the nature of that paid work and the terms and conditions of their employment.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers of History and Sociology of South Asia for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this article. Professor Velayutham Saravanan deserves special thanks for carefully guiding the article’s revision. I dedicate this article to the memory of all garment workers of Bangladesh who lost their lives in industrial disasters.