Compelling survival needs are pushing Bangladeshi women to go abroad for jobs. But they face indignities, oppression and unfair exploitation at their overseas work destinations
Our deprived, exploited and abused expatriate female workers
Munima Sultana
GLOBALISATION has ushered in increasing migration for labour. As International Labour Organisation (ILO) predicts, the greatest migration is also underway in Asia due to rapid economic growth of the region which is likely to be visible being both recipient and sending countries. Although the migration trend has contributed to create job opportunities for a vast skilled and unskilled labour including women, it however results in decreasing the regulation of the labour market, growth in the informal sector and emergence of new form of exploitation. Women labourers in such situation face the worst form of discrimination, exploitation and abuse due to the migration taking place mostly in the undocumented and informal sectors. Our female labourers also do not get by without suffering in some ways.
Different studies showed that the exploitation of women workers start from the home countries to the migrant countries. Women dominate mostly the service sector and are exploited in terms of work, pay, hours and contracts. Their freedom of movement is restricted and labour market discrimination both at home and abroad is high. Women work at risky and degrading working conditions and face gendere based violence in the workplace along with gender form racism and xenophobia. They are not allowed to be organised for their rights through law and migrants alien status.
In Bangladesh, according to a study of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), despite womens independent migration and their active contribution to the countrys economy through remittances and hard labour in the readymade garment industry, they often suffer from restrictive policy and blatant gender discrimination and other forms of marginalisation emanating from unprotected
labour market.
Rita Afsar, senior research fellow of BIDS, in a survey found that womens contribution to the remittance is more than their male counterparts because they remit on average 72 per cent of their income against 45 to 50 per cent by men. But they lack policy intervention to ensure gender equality as well as lack of access to information, communication, better training, family material resources to enjoy the overseas migration.
She found that as maximum migration of female labour is taking place in undocumented form, as they leave their family members including children under relatives or neighbour custody from whom they also take loan to go abroad, they face psychosomatic disorder. And this level goes up due to communication gap including language and abuse, humiliation from their employers. Majority women labourers do not have asset like land to manage money to go abroad and they take high interest loan.
The survey conducted by Rita Afsar on Bangladeshi migrants in the UAE disclosed that women predominantly involved in RMG sector and personal service sector for their skill developed by working in home country in a highly segmented labour market. But they become the victims of worst kind of gender disparity.
She found that income of emigrant women of RMG sector trebled compared with what they earned prior to migration but they were more humiliated ideologically. Although both male and female workers of RMG sector had the same level of education (primary level), duration of migration in the UAE was estimated at 3 years on an average for male and two years for women. The survey also found that RMG sector workers enjoyed greater freedom compared with domestic helpers because they could go for shopping or to bank alone . But compared to male colleagues, they had restricted freedom and locked from outside in the boarding house. More than two-thirds of domestic helpers were victims of maltreatment which ranged from lack of sufficient quantity and quality of food, denial of rest hour, verbal abuse as well as beating.
According to official statistics, women migrants represent around 3 per cent of the total migrants. But the BIDS study claimed that there were a huge number of undocumented workers who had crossed borders which put the total number of women and young girls who migrated by late 1990s to more than a million. A recent population report of UN Population Fund (UNFPA) showed that among 200 million international migrants in the world, 95 million are females. Bangladesh is one of the nine largest immigrant exporting countries after China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
Official statistics revealed that three-fifth of the international migration of Bangladeshi women was absorbed by the Gulf Cooperation Council states followed by Malaysia, which alone absorbed two-fifth of women migrants. In recent years, a few other countries of South East Asia like Brunei and South Korea also appeared in the list of receiving countries of female labour.
The overseas migration of female workers is taking place since the government officially allows unskilled female labour migration under some conditions. But these conditions neither were able to make the migration legal by making the employment documented nor able to support their interest in the employer countries. It was rather found that the number of deportation and sending back of female workers is also high compared to men putting them back to the poverty conditions they suffered previously.
According to UN Development fund for Women (UNIFEM), the demand of female migrant results from a number of global forces in which gender roles and sex discrimination are interwined with globalisation. From the perspective of women seeking work, a wide variety of factors combine to make border crossing an attractive, acceptable or in desperate circumstances - the only viable option. Unemployment and cuts in social services in the home country are found as causes for sending many women abroad in search of new opportunities. As well, it is found that many women flee conflict or the aftermath of conflict or cross border for personal security fleeing violence and abuse. But their absorbance in the unregulated sectors including domestic work, criminalized sectors including the sex industry leave them unprotected. ILO explains that demand for foreign labour reflects the longterm trend of informalisation of low skilled and poorly paid jobs where irregular migrants are preferred due to their willingness to work with inferior salaries, for short period and physically demanding and dirty jobs.
The ILO also focused the issue during its regional meeting held in Busan of South Korea and feared deterioration of the working environment in the labour market. The meeting found that Asia and the Pacific region faces massive job gaps as robust growth in trade and investment and output have failed to keep pace with the growth the labour force in Asia and the Pacific.
It has been estimated that 250 million workers are expected to be looking for jobs over the next decade in Asia and the Pacific region and three million people in the region will be leaving their homes every year in search of work. During the meeting, ILO Director General Juan Somavia expressed concern and said the gap between growth and job creation is producing a deficit in decent work and putting the brakes on efforts to reduce poverty. So in realising the decent work, ILO identified challenges which include wage growth lags behind productivity gains, long working hours, inequalities between sexes, rising mobility of worker, unseen decline in child labour, workers safety and health, rights at work, a growing reprentation gap to be faced by the labour intense countries like Bangladesh.
Sources of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agency (BAIRA) said they have tried to organise the labour market for female through formal channel and training but it was not properly managed due to irregularities and mishandling by other agencies. The favourable labour market for female was created since the Philippines withdrew their labour forces from the Gulf countries on human rights and wage issues. It was found that the unskilled and illiterate female workers faced cultural shock and communication problems and their share of earning either was taken away by the agency people or not paid by the employer. A leader of BAIRA also admitted that fraudulence, corruption and irregularities of service providers have decreased the prospect of the market .
The sector players underlined some factors that lack in dealing with vulnerabilities and exploitations which include low budget, low capacity and low priority given to the ministry concerned, lack of role of the Bangladeshi diplomatic missions, lack of knowledge among labour about mission role and lack of database on migrant workers and gender disaggregated data.
They found that government has to take actions regarding safety, security of the migrants including female ones through formulating a model contract, launching welfare fund in the employer countries, safety net programmes like insurance programme, access to family resources and link migration policy with trade of regional and global alliances and implementation of different UN conventions.
The writer is a journalist
