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Addressing gender issues has always been a component of Better Work Bangladesh |
Better Work Bangladesh has renewed its strategic focus on gender equality and women’s economic empowerment by integrating principles of gender equality and inclusion in all aspects of its work.
The Better Work Bangladesh programme works to support the development of a competitive garment industry that provides decent jobs for workers, including women workers, good business for factories and brands, and economic growth for the country.
It has recently outlined a new future framework for promoting gender equality in the Bangladeshi garment sector.
“In a sector that is driven by women workers — who comprise about 61.2% of Bangladesh’s apparel industry workforce — gender equality is vital in assuring the success of Better Work Bangladesh,” it says. “As such, promoting gender quality, the empowerment of women and inclusiveness in Bangladesh’s garment sector is a key part of our strategy.”
Addressing gender issues has always been a component of Better Work Bangladesh and the new Gender Strategy 2020-2022 is informed by the approach of the Better Work Global Gender Strategy (2018-2022) and the adoption of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190).
As well as pooling the valuable experience of other Better Work Country programmes – in particular the longer-standing Better Work country programmes in Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Haiti and Nicaragua – Better Work Bangladesh’s Gender Strategy is the outcome of an ongoing engagement with key actors contributing to the improvement of working conditions and the competitiveness of the ready-made garment (RMG) sector.
As a significant employer of women, the RMG sector can be linked to the increase in women’s economic participation in Bangladesh in the past 15 years. Despite such improvements, however, Better Work Bangladesh says industry stakeholders can do more to improve the working conditions for women and their opportunities for empowerment. While women still make up more than half of all workers in the sector, they continue to be overrepresented in lower-paid positions, with men holding the majority of supervisory roles.
The programme’s new strategy focuses on four key gender equality themes:
- Discrimination: Preventing sexual harassment; tackling contractual discrimination (e.g. recruitment and occupational segregation); bridging the gender wage gap
- Paid work and care: Sexual and reproductive health and rights (including pregnancy-related healthcare and nutrition); maternity protection; breastfeeding; childcare
- Voice and representation: Representation of women workers in factories’ committees (including Better Work’s worker-management committees) and trade unions, union federations, and employer organisations; voice in collective bargaining processes
- Leadership and skill development: Career opportunities in factories (e.g. line supervisors and management positions); leadership positions in governments, trade unions and employers organisations; financial literacy and household budget planning.
Through these four themes, Better Work Bangladesh says it will achieve a number of following impacts, including more workplaces that are gender-equal, inclusive and free from discrimination through the reduction in gender discrimination; improved health and well-being for workers in the garment sector; stronger women’s voice and gender-equal representation in social dialogue mechanisms at factory, sector and national levels; and increased opportunities and agency for women workers to fulfil their potential.
Meanwhile, four cross-cutting themes will inform the strategy’s implementation:
- The improvement model: Recognising that discrimination and barriers to gender equality are deeply embedded in adverse gender and social norms, Better Work Bangladesh supports partners on a journey to continuously promote gender equality and encourage partners to be proactive, as opposed to reactive.
- Working with men: The engagement of men and boys is crucial to sustainably address gender equality. Better Work Bangladesh will continue to find new ways to engage men and facilitating their role in breaking barriers and stereotypes. This can be accomplished by encouraging them to reflect on how gender norms affect them and embracing their roles in creating an enabling environment for women’s leadership, voice and representation.
- Disability inclusion: Guided by the ILO’s policy on disability inclusion, Better Work Bangladesh seeks to incorporate a disability-inclusive approach to ensure that persons with disabilities are fully and meaningfully incorporated in the RMG sector.
- Intersectionality: Better Work Bangladesh recognises that women and men face layers of discrimination, which can be based on their age, disability, ethnicity, family responsibility, gender identity, migrant status, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. Better Work Bangladesh will maximise the benefit of the, often unique access obtained to tripartite constituents and factories, to highlight and support work to address discrimination along any lines, working together with other ILO initiatives to ensure rights of all workers.
The programme has also outlined four specific commitments it hopes to achieve by 2021, among which is a goal that Better Work Bangladesh factories will have promoted practices and policies to address gender-based discrimination, including gender wage gaps and violence and harassment, including sexual harassment.
It has also committed to its factories having enhanced awareness on and integration of minimum standards for breastfeeding support and maternity protection in the workplace, in addition to strengthening mechanisms to ensure effective representation of and by women workers.,
The final commitment will see Better Work Bangladesh have enhanced awareness of, and supported the implementation of mechanisms, that increase the number of women who are able to develop their skills (technical and/or leadership) and advance their career.
“While serious challenges remain in achieving full gender equality in the world’s garment factories, the industry has made significant progress. Third-party research has validated the success of our model for improving working conditions through women’s empowerment. Now we are leveraging this success, and our learnings from the research, to scale up positive impact on gender equality and achieve lasting change. We will report back to all stakeholders on our progress as we continue to refine our vision and implement this strategy,” Better Work Bangladesh says.
