Livelihood and Environmental Perspective of Female Garments Workers in Bangladesh: A Study on Selected Garment Factories

The rapid development of the garment sector, along with its mobilization of women workers, has made it a popular issue of concern among policy makers, activists and scholars. This paper intends to investigate the work environment, both physical and social, of the women workers in the ready-made garment (RMG) sector in Bangladesh. To that end, it attempts to identify the problems faced by the women workers, to explore the underlying reasons and to recommend appropriate measures in meeting the challenges. The study surveyed 180 workers from 30 garment factories situated in different locations of Dhaka and Gazipur area to determine the key influential factors that significantly influence on livelihood and environmental perspective of female garments workers in Bangladesh. These workers were surveyed through convenience sampling method with structured questionnaire from June to July 2016. After collection of primary data, hypotheses were formulated and one sample T-test was used to test the hypotheses with 0.05 level of statistical significance. For assuming the characteristics of data, demographic analysis, descriptive analysis and interpretations were drawn on the basis of percentage frequency, calculated mean, standard deviation (SD). In addition, empirical analyses were depicted by coefficient of variation (CV). The recommendations were provided based on the research findings and analysis.