Economic Impacts of Coronavirus-19 on Female Workers in Bangladesh's Garment Sector

Abstract

Export manufacturing in low income countries has been devastated by COVID-19. Female workers are likely to be particularly affected, given that they may be in more precarious positions within and lack information about their legal rights and eligibility for the government stimulus and other relief programs. This proposal develops and implements a mobile-phone based survey of garment workers in Bangladesh, to provide insights about COVID-19 responses in their workplace and the effects on workers by gender. We recruit the sample by beginning with two samples of garment workers employed in past research and ask for referrals from these workers, employing statistical techniques to reweigh the sample to achieve representativeness. We find that, while garment sector workers experience layoffs, garment work appears to be superior to alternatives, at least during a pandemic. Employers’ adoption of COVID-19 prevention practices is negatively correlated with workers’ experience of COVID-19, even controlling for workers’ personal characteristics. This research is part of the Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low-Income Countries programme