Wednesday | 15 January 2025 | Reg No- 06
বাংলা
   
Wednesday | 15 January 2025 | Epaper

Ensure women's financial advancement

Published : Saturday, 17 March, 2018 at 12:00 AM  Count : 505
Haradhan Ganguly
Your mother is caring. My mother is also caring too. Definitely every mother is caring. Every sister is caring. But how much they are paid for their household works. What a laughing stock it is! My mother's affection, my sister's feelings are above all quantity measurement. Since total issue is mingled with emotional attachment. But matter does not end there. Say objectively, mothers' household works, sisters' works if are done by house maids, then? They are to be paid. They are to be accounted for while going to count GDP.
An organized economy does not allow the works of any sectors to be left monetarily uncounted. As a result they get accurate GDP in the final analysis. In our economy, Economists and social thinkers think, women's engagement in household work largely goes unnoticed, undervalued and unrecognized. Such practice contributes to inequity in socio-economic power as well as violence and discrimination against woman. Inclusion of women's unaccounted work in the national GDP should be a must for the economy, they thought. In our economy, achievement in terms of women's employment and education has been tremendous over the last few decades, but a woman still does not enjoy status even within her family, let alone outside of it.
Recently we had way past the International Women's day. Women's rights in various forms were discussed in many ways in different occasions. Still our society is playing a gender-biased role in various ways and hurdles are on the way for women to fair opportunity to move up the hierarchy for their financial advancement. Still women's works are bulked informal sectors up. According to Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2015-16, Bangladesh's 86.2 per cent labour force is engaged in some type of informal employment up from 75.2 per cent in 2000.
Informal employment in the garment sector has also increased to 95.3 per cent in 2015-16 from 92 per cent in 2010. Even our mothers' care and their household works fall in informal sectors. Experts' views, informal sectors need incentives and policy support to become formal as the graduation entails costs and lots of barriers. They came up with the suggestion as they think that despite Bangladesh's positive economic development for more than a decade, employment in the informal or unorganized sector has been increasing constantly.
Our reference to mothers and sisters are symbolically designed to understand the works of women folk. Since the bulk of them go with informality. But the definition of informal-formal dichotomy has undergone a number of changes in successive LFSs. For example, before 2010, informality was associated with four attributes: Unpaid family workers (Mothers, Sisters etc), irregular paid workers, day labourer in agriculture and non-agriculture and domestic workers. In 2013, those were not receiving pension and not contributing to retirement fund were also added in the definition of informality. If you remain informal, you remain outside of the government policy and incentives. So an understanding of the informal sector is very important as lots of people are there. Women are bulked within.
Disparity against women has reached such a height that any automation of manufacturing reduced the female workers' participation ratio in the garment sector to 60.8 per cent in 2016 from 64 per cent in 2015. CPD finds it out in its recent study. The deceleration of female workers' participation meant the ratio of male workers is on the rise because the factory owners think female workers are not able to handle modern machineries properly. In 2015, the female to male workers' participation ratio was 64.36 but it has now declined to 60.8. The owners have been upgrading the factories by installing modern machineries mainly to maintain the strict lead time. Some 47.37 per cent of large enterprises and 25 per cent medium enterprises used advanced technologies.
 Female workers are proportionately less knowledgeable about operating different machines compared with their male counterparts. The study is prepared by surveying 193 garment enterprises and 2123 workers. The study found that investment in the sector increased after the Rana Plaza building collapse. Both the entrepreneurs and buyers have kept their confidence in Bangladesh's garment sector which created additional employment at a time when workers were losing jobs due to closure of a good number of factories.
But grim picture goes with women's employment. Rather more automation is reducing more probability of women's employment. Rather they are losing jobs in a big way. It indicates disparity is ensued with automation. Our structure of the economy has made it so. How can we uplift women's rights in the context of modern advancement?
UN Committee for Development Policy (CDP) will declare Bangladesh's graduation into developing country from LDC's status this month. This will create a severe competitive edge for our exports. Generally we are exporting 1300 items abroad. Out of these, garments' earnings occupy 80 per cent. 250 to 3 thousand crore taka this sector is earning every year. But after graduation our export will face 6.7 per cent tariff enhancement on all our exports. At this government will have to count additional 270 crore taka. Probably garments will lose income amounting to 500 to 600 crore taka unless it goes to heavy automation and product diversity. But automation is anti-women employment, so their empowerment. The success story of women empowerment in garments will be a lack-lustre one. So preparation for graduation pre supposes a vast programme and policy support to make women technically skilled as a deterrent to female labour saving automation.
Not only automation in garments is anti- women empowerment, their higher education has become the enemy of them. BBS in its Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) 2015-16 said educated women suffer from the highest level of unemployment in Bangladesh despite a quota for women in public service and many private organizations' claim of being equal opportunity. The unemployment rate among female graduates is about 2.5 times more than their male counterparts' 16.8 per cent.
Such a high level of unemployment prevails at a time when increasing number of women are enrolling at universities and economic activities are expanding, driven by the private sector which accounts for 80 per cent of the economy. Experts blamed a host of factors behind the higher unemployment among women including a lack of interest among employers to hire women in white-collar jobs and negative social norms.
Lack of safety and security, sexual harassment and violence against women, unfriendly work environment and women's preference to do certain kinds of jobs are also blamed for high unemployment among the educated female workforce. So in one side imperfect structure of the economy and on the other side social norms and the psycho-factors of the employer are on the way for women in their full human rights.
The writer is a freelance contributor





LATEST NEWS
MOST READ
Also read
Stop bloodshed in the war torn country
Will Kurds keep American weapons after Syria withdrawal?
Post Language Movement East Bengal and struggle for rights
Tribute to Comrade Moni Singh
Agriculture: An effective approach of improving condition of disabled people
The environment ready to arrange fair election?
International Monetary Fund: A heartbreaking story!
Political and election culture in Bangladesh
Editor : Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury
Published by the Editor on behalf of the Observer Ltd. from Globe Printers, 24/A, New Eskaton Road, Ramna, Dhaka.
Editorial, News and Commercial Offices : Aziz Bhaban (2nd floor), 93, Motijheel C/A, Dhaka-1000.
Phone: PABX- 41053001-06; Online: 41053014; Advertisement: 41053012.
E-mail: district@dailyobserverbd.com, news©dailyobserverbd.com, advertisement©dailyobserverbd.com, For Online Edition: mailobserverbd©gmail.com
🔝
close