Female Garment Workers in India and Bangladesh in the Post-MFA Era

Abstract

The manner in which globalization has affected employment and people’s lives from a gender perspective has been an issue of potent concern not only in the developing countries but also in the developed ones. What is clear thus far is that the impacts are multifarious and preclude any hasty evaluation as to whether they are positive or negative. This is because, first, globalization, despite its core connotation of universalism, actually takes many forms. Globalization proceeds simultaneously in multiple dimensions, not only in economic but also in social and cultural dimensions. Second, people who are engaged in globalization have different combinations of social and economic attributes, such as gender, class, ethnicity and age, which differentiate the material and interpretative impacts of globalization at the level of individuals or any given social group. In other words, the effects of globalization are mediated by the local or contextual factors in which individuals are embedded.