Essay on Behind the Scenes of the Garment Industry in Bangladesh.

On the 24th of April 2013, a tragedy occurred in Dhaka, Bangladesh, resulting in the deaths of more than 1000 people and the destruction of a nine-story garment factory “Rana Plaza” (Manik& Yardley, n.d.,). However, the unsatisfactory condition of the building was known to employees. The day before the tragedy, several cracks were noticed, yet the owner of the factory ignored the warning by police to suspend the factory. In addition, workers were physically intimidated which shows, illustrating the power of society and the desperation of financial condition as individuals (Hossain, 2013). 80% of the workers at the Rana Plaza were female; this was because their labor was the cheapest in the world, with the minimum income BDT being 3000 taka per month (the equivalent of 37 Australian dollars) (Burke, 2013). This industry represented the international fashion labels in Europe, America, cosmopolitanism and progressive brands such as Benetton etc. Most of the factory’s textile products were internationally exported, earning foreign currency and allowing it to become the largest industry in Bangladesh. The “Rana Plaza” was one of the main industry, which maintained the economy and society as individuals in Bangladesh. The power of capital at the Bangladesh level is the arrangement of dominance transnational businesses at the global level, which is a smaller rate of powerful

Have you ever thought about how much labor the female workers in Japanese factories have done? Well, it’s a lot but it all pays off! Female workers in Japan worked long hours. One regular working day could be as long as 13-14 hours (Document B)! Luckily the girls got paid! It may have taken about 16 long hours of working, just to be able to buy one- pound of sugar (Document C). The girls spent a lot of the time working in factories but the lifelong relationships they made were priceless! Female workers in Japanese Silk Factories: Did the costs outweigh the benefits? For the female silk factory workers the benefits outweighed the costs for two reasons: My first reason is how the bonding relationships outweighed the costs because they were life

Women who were working in factories were severely impacted socially and economically during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Young women were found to dominate the silk and textile factories, however, they did not receive the same pay as men. The chart referencing gender and age of silk factory workers in five English Towns in 1833 reveals that 63 to 96% of the workers were female, which of those were 35 to 53% under the age of 16. (Document A). The chart referencing gender and age of silk factories in Nagano, Japan in 1901 show that 12,519 females worked in 205 mills, which was 92% of the population. The ages of the female workers reveal that 18% were 14 and under, 48% were 15 to 20 years old, and 34% were over the age of 20 (Document B). The

On April 24, 2013, NewYorkTimes journalist Jim Yardley reported on the collapse of Rana Plaza, an eight-story factory complex in the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, which claimed the lives of 1,100 people. A 400-page report of the incident places the blame squarely on the shoulders of the building's owner, Sohel Rana, along with the owners of the building's five garment factories, who now face possible charges of murder, along with accusations of “ignoring safety warnings and locking exit doors,” while the Bangladeshi government continues to receive harsh criticism for its lax enforcement of labor safety standards in the country's billion-dollar clothing manufacturing industry (“Sweatshop Labor”). The garment industry in Bangladesh is one of the world's leading exporters of clothing, second only to China, with more than 5,000 garment factories employing an excess of 3 million workers, producing merchandise for top brand retailers in the United States and Europe (Yardley; “Sweatshop Labor”). Workers in these factories endure long hours and unsafe working conditions for wages so low parents must send their children to work instead of school so that they have enough to eat. The tragedy of Rana Plaza brings to the forefront the true cost of things; is it worth 1,100 lives to save a few dollars on a shirt or a pair of jeans?

The hard working women who worked in these factories suffered horrible working conditions, not to mention low salary.

Working in factories was extremely difficult because the work was very monotonous. More or less nine hundred thousand women worked in the textile Industry. The Sweated trade also engaged large numbers of women, the figure almost climbing to a million. Most employers were unbearable in their attitudes towards these working class women and therefore paid very low salaries.

The definition of the “new woman” was being established and merited the participation of women wage earners and public service. The primary labor these women participated in was in the rise of the garment industry. Many families would send their unmarried daughters to work in garment shops to contribute to the families’ income. Manufacturing occupations were also being held in textile mill and shoe industries. However, to the public these manufacturing jobs women held were regarding as unskilled

As industrialization spread in Western Europe, the production of products and goods moved from the household to factories which drastically changed family life. Married women were unable to work unless they left their children and home in someone else’s care. Moreover, middle-class women generally did not leave their homes in order to work. In contrast, the women of Eastern Asia rapidly joined the work force after the introduction of industrialization and made up a gigantic portion of the labor force. This difference is probably due to the fact that the rural women of Eastern Asia were always laborers, and they make up the majority of the female population. Additionally, European women generally preferred domestic labor to laborious tasks. Rural women were offered independence by leaving their homes in order to perform domestic work; they generally sent their earnings to their families or saved it for themselves. Moreover, the European women that participated in the work force were forced to travel long distances and were separated from their families from long hours. Additionally, their wages were significantly lower than that of their male counterparts. Furthermore, women worked under poor conditions and were constantly susceptible to disease. Similarly, the poor women of Eastern Asia sought employment in the cotton and silk industry.

In past centuries, Latin American women have always been there to fulfill their duties as wives and mothers at home. Women were use to working inside the home while their husbands worked outside of the home. During the 20th century, women around the world started to seek changes for themselves. They wanted to be considered equal to their husbands and wanted the opportunity to obtain a job outside of the home. A decrease in the need for traditional craft workers, such as weavers and sewers, greatly influence the decision for change in women. They were no longer needed to make clothing or prepare food and candy the traditional way. Handmade items were pushed aside for the new and improved “factory-made products” (Murray 158). Latin American women made a living off of selling their handmade items; now they were no longer needed.

With the dawn of Industrialization many jobs were beginning to emerge for poor locals and immigrants alike. Many people flooded cities to get job opportunities that had come about, but many women and men did not know what they were getting roped up in. Many women worked in factories which boosted industrialization at the beginning of the century. They were soon involved in sweatshops where they worked in tenement rooms with very horrible conditions and very low pay. These sweatshops came around because bosses sweated the workers by making them work longer hours for less pay. Women would usually work around fifty-six to fifty-nine hours per week and sometimes into the weekend with no

The introductory of the documentary examines the fabric mills of Bangladesh. It is very competitive in the international market place to find low cost labor; when merchandise manufactured in another country is imported these country put on a duty rate. Apparel companies contemplating low cost labor,

Americans love to shop. With malls everywhere you go, shopping just might be America's favorite past time! When you are out shopping though, do you ever stop to think where all of those clothes and shoes come from? When I was younger, well, actually until recently, I always thought they were all made by machines. Shirt machines, pants machines…you get the picture. I have learned, however, that for the most part, clothes are still made on sewing machines, by people, and often under circumstances that we can only imagine.

In many developing countries globalization has brought masses of wealth to the elite at the expense of the poor. Consequently, many women of the poorer classes leave their homeland in search of opportunities for employment. These women are disproportionately affected by

Women in Bangladesh have had a long history of exploitation and have faced discrimination due to their gender. Bangladeshi women came to the international attention in the form of cheap and docile labour. Traditionally, the idea of separate spheres, where men are the breadwinners and women look after the household, comprised the typical Bangladeshi household. Due to the impact of globalization, the economic stability of the country has been severely destroyed and has forced many women to work for longer hours that seem not enough to let the ends meet. Bangladesh Nari Progati Sangha (BNPS) is an agency for empowerment of women in Bangladesh and states that the current trend of globalization in Bangladesh, has an exploitative nature which is extreme to women in the society. Rural women have been working quite long in the agricultural sector, but with the commercialization of the agricultural sector, many women have migrated to the city centers such as Dhaka and working for garment or other industries for minimum wage. Women have a limited scope of economic development in a Bangladeshi society and are paid less than the men, due to the socio-political structure, as well as their lack of education, which is governed by the patriarchal ideology. Given that,

Faruqui, M. (2014, July). Nobody can beat Bangladesh in price and quality. Retrieved from http://www.textiletoday.com.bd/magazine/873