Made in Bangladesh

Woven with violence against female workers

“Made in Bangladesh” is a label familiar to those of us who shop for clothes in major high street outlets. Major UK retailers use their enormous bargaining power to cheaply import goods from the country. Yet the Bangladeshi garment industry is extremely exploitative of its workers. Instead of setting global industry standards, Western business practices ignore or even intensify the exploitation of a mostly young and precarious female workforce.

Dr Shoaib Ahmed investigates working conditions in the garment industry of his native Bangladesh. He shares his latest research revealing the industry’s disturbingly systematic use of violence against young women. In an industry built on male-perpetrated violence and secrecy, they are its “ideal workers”.

Why are young women the “ideal workers” for Bangladesh’s garment industry and why does the world need to listen?

In short, they’re seen as less able than men to resist the exploitative and abusive practices that are normalised in the industry. Secondly, Bangladesh is the world’s second largest exporter of fast-fashion clothing, and the industry’s practices are partly a result of pressure created by Western retailers and their economic power.

The situation has changed in the nearly 10 years since I began my research. At the time of the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster – the collapse of an eight-storey garment factory complex on the outskirts of Dhaka – over 80% of the workforce were female, aged 16-36. Today the picture is changing with 55% of workers being from this demographic. This is partly due to the economic impact of Covid-19, when the industry shed much of its largely young female workforce. However, many did not return, leaving the industry for good due to its exploitative and violent practices.

It’s not simply that garment workers are poorly paid or informally employed. Their rightful wages are frequently stolen, working hour records are falsified, and many are physically and psychologically coerced into meeting strenuous quotas, working shifts of up to 16 hours. Even though many are leaving the industry, young women still make up over half of its workforce. Since the start of my research, this struck me as remarkable given Bangladeshi society’s traditional subordination of women in domestic family roles. Why would an industry in a country steeped in patriarchal values encourage so many young, and frequently childless or unmarried, women to join its workforce?

The industry’s abusive and exploitative practices operate through the wider oppression of women across Bangladeshi society. Not only are women at an overall disadvantage in the labour market, but there is widespread normalisation of male violence against women. Being from Bangladesh myself, I grew up witnessing the violence of establishment-protected male elites against women, migrant and child workers. This is key to how the garment industry operates there and reflects the human reality of Western companies’ cost-cutting, outsourcing practices.

What motivated your research in this area and how did you carry it out?

At the time of the 2012 Tazreen Fashion factory fire and the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse, I was living in the northwestern outskirts of Dhaka where these disasters occurred. Between them thousands of workers were killed and injured. I bore witness to their devastating impacts on the local community. I remember the screams broadcast on live TV of the Tazreen factory workers caught in the blaze. The Rana Plaza tragedy acutely revealed the specific vulnerabilities and marginalisation of an overwhelmingly young female workforce. These events left a deep mark on me.

As a scholar of accounting, with an interest in philosophy, I am interested in the potential for my discipline to help realise social justice. I wanted to use the methods and insights of accounting to get to grips with problems of the Bangladesh garment industry as well as its possible solutions. I interviewed 50 workers in total, aged 18-38, and 30 of whom were women. Some of these interviews were emotive experiences that brought me to tears.

One worker tearfully recalled that her supervisor demanded their workforce of 40 produce 200 pieces an hour, and when they failed to meet this target, he called them “bitch, slut, whore” and beat them with a wooden stick. Others told me more stories of physical abuse, as well as sexual harassment and psychological torture that drove some to feeling suicidal. Bringing this to light and giving voice to workers’ experiences motivated my research further. I also spent 40 hours observing operations in five factories and personally experienced the fearful and oppressive atmosphere that workers must endure. Most were afraid to even look at me.

I was able to visit the factories that I did with the permission of some of the owners I was able to interview. These were all men, and, along with the 10 managers I interviewed (also all men), some of them shocked me by openly comparing their workers with animals and insects. One even brazenly commented that “women are very good at sewing and stitching. They are also vulnerable. They face violence at home. However, they don’t engage in nasty politics… So, we recruit them. We save them. We empower them”.

Can anything be done to change the industry and its culture of violence and secrecy?

While not in themselves responsible for the Bangladesh industry’s specific systems of abuse, Western companies’ undercutting practices are a driving force behind it. If these companies consistently paid even the real market value for their products, this would remove one of the central reasons that Bangladeshi manufacturers often cite as justification for wage theft and other illegal practices. I would further propose that Western retailers implement a profit-sharing scheme. For example, they might allocate a minimum of one penny per piece (1PPP) to the workforce responsible for producing the “Made in Bangladesh” goods.

Secondly, Western companies and governments have enormous bargaining power over the domestically powerful Bangladesh garment industry. Their threats to boycott imports in the wake of the Rana Plaza collapse compelled the Bangladesh industry and government to act. This influence should be used to end the abusive and manipulative methods the industry uses in the absence of formal recruitment and employment practices.

Western companies are the most powerful actors in the global value chain, and only their involvement can create the real pressure for change.”Dr Shoaib Ahmed

However, there must be a multi-stakeholder initiative, on the model of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety in response to Rana Plaza. These achieved real, if limited, changes to the industry, by bringing the pressure of Western importers together with the involvement of those across the Bangladesh industry and its export operations. This includes the workers whose testimonies and different forms of resistance, such as keeping their own working logs, are vital in holding industry leaders to account.

Ultimately, workers are leaving the industry because of its dehumanising conditions, hence the number of women workers has drastically fallen in recent years. Companies cannot go on outsourcing at the expense of workers’ rights and welfare forever.

Photo credit AkuAku