Revisiting women empowerment: a retrospect on the other side of readymade garment industry

Abstract

Empowerment in the garments industry is the pivot of a seesaw, where at one end there are women and then there’s the other end that carries all the obstacles. This study works with women empowerment concentrating on Bangladesh garments workers. We might assume or take for granted that once these women are employed to also be consequently empowered. My ethnography intends to examine this notion by breaking the whole concepts in to aspects naming Economic, Political and Social Empowerment respectively. The results were rather positive and yet disappointing because these women workers are ironically bound to leave their jobs after a certain time and the supposed empowerment they achieved is at great stake or ravished at that stage. Furthermore, at one end being unemployed and at other end getting subjected to abuse and social struggles puts the built empowerment and its concept and existence to test.