The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labor Market Decisions in London and DhakaIn this path-breaking study, social economist Naila Kabeer examines the lives of Bangladeshi garment workers in Bangladesh and Britain to shed light on the question of what constitutes “fair” competition in international trade. She argues that if the unhealthy coalition of multinationals and labor movements is truly seeking to improve the working conditions for women and children in the “Third World,” as well as those of western workers, their efforts should be directed away from an attempt to impose labor standards and towards a support for the organization of labor rights. Any attempt to devise acceptable labor standards at an international level which takes no account of the forces of inclusion and exclusion with local labor movements is, she further argues, likely to represent the interests of the powerful at the expense of those of the weak. |
Contents
Labour standards double standards? Selective | 1 |
Rational fools or cultural dopes? Stories of structure | 16 |
background | 54 |
women workers and labour | 82 |
factory wages and intra | 142 |
background | 193 |
homeworkers and labour | 230 |
homebased piecework | 284 |
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Common terms and phrases
able activity agency analysis Bangla Bangladesh Bangladeshi community Bangladeshi women bargaining behaviour Bengali breadwinner Britain cent chapter child labour choice clothing industry conflict constraints countries cultural daughters Dhaka domestic dowry earnings economic employers explained factory employment family members father female labour forms of employment garment factories garment industry garment workers gender girls groups home-based homeworking husband important income individual interviewed Kaneez labour force labour market decisions labour standards labour supply decisions lives London context machine machinists male marriage married ment migration norms organised paid parents particular patriarchal pointed preferences protectionism purdah racism Razia Sultana relationships reported response role rural sample sector social status structure structure and agency sweatshops take up factory testimonies Third World Tower Hamlets trade trade unions UNICEF village wages wives woman women workers women's labour supply World Bank