To assess the impact of the ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic on the overall working and living conditions of garment workers in Bangladesh, South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM) in partnership with Microfinance Opportunities (MFO) have conducted 14 consecutive weeks of interviews with 1367 workers who are employed in factories in Chittagong, Dhaka City, Gazipur, Narayanganj, and Savar.
Over three-quarters of the working respondents are women. The survey shows that female workers are more likely than male workers to make financial decisions in consultation with other family or household members and men are more likely than women to make financial decisions on their own.
The survey has looked into aspects of salary management, expenditure, savings and education decisions.
According to the survey, 44% of garment workers manage their salaries on their own. However, in that case, it is only 39% of women compared to 62% of men who reported that they make salary decisions on their own.
36% of garment workers reported that in making decisions about their salary earnings, someone else is involved. Following are the detailed findings of the survey.
In terms of Salary Managers, when asked who is in charge of managing their salary, 44% of garment workers reported that they make decisions on their own, 39% of women compared to 62% of men reported making salary decisions on their own, 36% of garment workers reported that they themselves in addition to others make a decision together as to what to do with their salary earnings, 39% of women reported sharing decision-making responsibilities, compared to 23% for men, 14% of garment workers take what they need and hand over the rest, 15% of the women and 11% of the men interviewed reported doing this, 6% of garment workers reported handing their salary over for someone else to decide what to do with their salary earnings, 7% of women reported handing over their salary compared to 4% of men.
Additionally, only 6% of garment workers reported that the decision maker had changed since the beginning of April. Despite the small number of data, when a change was reported the data suggest it was because of a change in who in the household was (or wasn’t) working at the time.
Asking in regard to spending money, it was found that who makes the decisions on spending money, 29% of garment workers reported that they make spending decisions on their own, 24% of women compared to 45% of men reported that they are solely in charge of making spending decisions.
, 61% of garment workers reported that they themselves in addition to their family members help decide how to spend money, 65% of women compared to 46% of men said that spending decisions are taken up by the whole family, The remaining 10% reported it was someone else who decides how to spend their money, 10% of the women and 8% of the men interviewed reported this.
Only 4% of garment workers reported that the decision maker for spending money had changed since April.
In terms of saving money when asked who makes the decisions on savings, 35% of garment workers reported that they make savings decisions on their own, women were less likely to report that they make savings decisions on their own, at 30% compared to 49% for men, 55% of garment workers reported that savings decisions are made with the entire family, themselves included.
Following the same pattern, very few garment workers, just 2%, reported that there had been any change to the savings decision maker since April 2020.
