Analyzing Women's Empowerment: Microfinance and Garment Labor in Bangladesh

There are over twenty million women associated with microfinance activities sponsored by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and four million women in the ready-made garment industry in Bangladesh. In both sectors, women outweigh men as economic actors and as agents of change. Women in the microfinance sector in Bangladesh have received global recognition through the work of Grameen Bank, the 2006 Nobel Prize winner that made microfinance a global instrument to alleviate women's poverty. However, women in the garment industry were largely neglected in the international media until the collapse of Rana Plaza, an eight-story building that housed several garment factories, which killed over 1,100 people and injured 2,500 in April 2013.1In this paper, I compare and contrast two models of women's empow- erment in Bangladesh: the microfinance model of Grameen Bank (here- after referred to as the "Bank") and the wage-labor model based on the ready-made garment manufacturing industry. I use the case of Bangladesh because it showcases the changes taking place in a predominantly Muslim society among women engaged in different spheres of economic activities.2Despite low wages and the sweatshop-like working conditions, women in the ready-made garment industry have gained greater autonomy and self-awareness compared with their rural counterparts who are engaged in microfinance activities. Moreover, we find relatively greater levels of empowerment among garment industry workers because, unlike micro- finance borrowers who work from their homes, garment industry workers engage outside their immediate social network, including on factory floors. This has led to greater cogni- zance of themselves as wage-laborers and as workers whose labor power is exploited by capitalist forces, garment factory owners, and western retailers. In contrast, microfinance activities in rural areas have not turned women into entrepreneurs. In fact, a majority of women in rural areas have remained inside their homes and have trans- ferred their microfinance loans to their husbands, who then engage in some form of petty trade or entrepreneurial activity.BANGLADESHBangladesh is a nation of 160 million people squeezed into a state the size of Wisconsin. Despite its endemic poverty and the harsh impact of climate change, the country is ahead of neighboring India in terms of girls' primary and secondary education, maternal health, and mortality. Citing Bangladesh's investment in female healthcare workers and school teachers, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has said that Bangladesh has over- taken India in all aspects of social indicators on the Human Development Index.3 According to economists, Bangladesh is pegged at a 6 percent annual growth rate that may soon place it firmly alongside middle-income countries. That said, the 6 percent growth rate does not take into account the distribution of wealth, growth and continues to favor the upper and middle classes. The poorer sections of the population continue to swell due to the loss of agricultural land to river erosion, rural indebtedness, and the lack of gainful employment. This dire situation has resulted in internal migration from rural to urban areas and emigration in search of employ- ment overseas.THE CAIRO POPULATION CONFERENCE AND WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENTThe 1970s through the 1990s were marked by a series of initia- tives that targeted women's issues at a global level. Foremost among them were the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo (Cairo Population Conference) and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing. At the Cairo Population Conference, representatives from 179 countries came together to address the impedi- ments that were preventing women from realizing their full potential. The signatories agreed that gender equality "implies a society where both men and women enjoy the same opportunities, outcomes, rights, and obliga- tions in all spheres of life. …