The social cost of Bangladeshi women migration would be very high as they remain separated from their families for a long time and isolated at their workplaces, according to an ILO study.
The social cost of Bangladeshi women migration would be very high as they remain separated from their families for a long time and isolated at their workplaces, according to an ILO study.
It said the Bangladeshi women migrant workers were often employed as domestic helps – a job that frequently keeps them confined at the homes of their employers. As a result, they can become isolated and cut off from other Bangladeshis, if any happens to live in the area.
International Labour Organisation (ILO) conducted the study titled ‘Gender and Migration from Bangladesh: Mainstreaming Migration into the National Development Plans from a Gender Perspective’ and published the report in 2015, the FE obtained the report recently.
The study was based on an in-depth survey where a total of 67 returning migrants and 69 migrants’ households were interviewed in 14 districts across the country.
According to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) data, some 118,088 women went abroad in 2016. In the last five years, a total of 391,517 women workers found overseas jobs.
The ILO study found language barrier a problem – which frequently makes it difficult to communicate with the employers and the employers’ families, developing a further sense of isolation.
These could all be compounded by the separation from one’s family back in Bangladesh , and the possibility that contact with one’s family will be restricted or non-existent, the study said.
A number of interviewees said their employers looked down upon them severely (some women were even called ‘beggars’) which showcased the deterioration of social status that many migrant women workers could experience in the destination countries.
These were the all powerful social costs paid by many Bangladeshi women who find employment overseas, and these do not even taken into account the dreadful reality that many of them face the threat of exploitation, the study said. It said some women migrated to escape unhappy personal and social situations, including bad marriages, harassment, violence and lack of employment opportunities for themselves and their spouses.
Such treatment and situations pleased these women in a socially disadvantage group, and they saw migration primarily as a quest for independence and means of achieving self-sufficiency.
But while migration abroad might enable women to escape from troubling social and personal situations in their country of origin, it came with social trials and costs of its own. For one thing, according to the study, women trying to escape from desperate personal situations might be more likely to fall victim to human trafficking.
Fonte: The Financial Express
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