The Framework

Objectives, Significance, and Methods

This is part of an ongoing series drawn from my PhD thesis, "Globalization, Internal Migration, and Gender Relations: An Explorative Study on the Women Working at the Ready Made Garment Factories in Dhaka", submitted to the University of Dhaka in 2013. The research was a comparative study of women's migration and work in two different parts of Bangladesh – Netrokona and Khulna. These posts are an effort to share that research experience beyond academic walls.

About the thesis

My PhD thesis, submitted to the University of Dhaka in 2013, is organized into seven chapters. Chapter One introduces the study – its background, objectives, and the methodological journey of doing fieldwork in two very different parts of Bangladesh. Chapter Two covers the theoretical framework – migration theory, empowerment, and the connecting thread of gendered migration in a globalized economy. Chapter Three is where the fieldwork findings begin – a detailed geo-political and economic analysis of the two sending villages under study and the reasons behind their very different migration patterns. Chapters Four, Five and Six form the empirical heart of the thesis. Chapter Four examines migration decisions – who decides, how, and under what pressures. Chapter Five looks at the social perception of women's work – what it means for a woman's status when the community views her labor as respectable or otherwise. Chapter Six goes deepest – into the women's own perceptions of autonomy, happiness, marriage, and what it means to feel content. Chapter Seven concludes with a summary of findings and a brief look at the future of the RMG industry.

The present post gives a brief introduction to the objectives, the main point of departure, and the methodology. The following post will take the reader into the field – the human story of how the research actually happened. After that, the series will move into the theoretical framework and then into the findings themselves, drawn primarily from Chapters Three through Six – the chapters that were an attempt to bring out the voices that mostly remain unheard.

Objectives and Significance

The study of globalization, migration, and women's work in Bangladesh is a well-researched area. Scholars like Naila Kabeer (2000), Rita Afsar (2001), Petra Dannecker (2002), and Nazli Kibria (1995) have made significant contributions to understanding how factory work affects women's lives, household income, and decision-making power. These studies helped me tremendously to gain a broader insight into the RMG sector in Bangladesh, the challenges of women working in it, and the empowerment concept as it relates to these women. But at the time of my research, in 2008, I kept finding two gaps that I felt were worth filling.

The first gap was in the scope of inquiry itself. Most existing studies measured empowerment through standard economic indicators: wages, remittances, control over household income (Kabeer, 1999; Paul-Majumder and Begum, 2000). These are valid measures. But somewhere I felt that a woman's inner self was missing. My research set out to ask less measurable but harder questions. Not just whether factory work made these women better off, but what it actually meant for their sense of themselves: what makes her feel content, how she negotiates her identity between the village she came from and the city she now lives in, how she is perceived in her community, and how that perception – alongside her own – shapes her idea of who she is. This included looking at cultural globalization, not just economic factors, but their exposure to cellular phones, social media, and shifting aspirations, as a factor in migration decisions (Appadurai, 1996; Moghadam, 1999).

The second gap was geographical. Almost all existing studies on RMG migration in Bangladesh at that time focused on Dhaka or on factory experiences (Afsar, 2001; Kibria, 1995; Dannecker, 2002). A comparative, qualitative, feminist study of two sending villages from geographically distinct regions – one a high-migration area and one a low-migration area – with voices from the families left behind was, to me, a relatively new area to venture into.

As I am writing to share my PhD research experience in 2026, the thesis of which was submitted in 2013, I realize that nearly fifteen years have passed. The research landscape on RMG women, migration, and empowerment in Bangladesh has grown significantly since then. Whether the gaps that I found at the time of my research are still there is a question for current researchers to answer.

The main research question driving the thesis was this: how does globalization, both economic and cultural, change gender relations in the rural households of women garment workers in Dhaka? Four sub-questions flowed from that:

• What geo-political factors drive women's internal migration to Dhaka?
• What intra-household and socio-cultural factors shape the migration decision?
• How does social perception of work form a basis for women's empowerment?
• How do women themselves perceive and experience changes in their own lives?

The scope of the study was deliberately focused. It did not look at factory floor conditions, labor rights, state policy, or legal compliance. My focus was on the women's inner world, and on the communities they left behind.

Methodology: How I Did the Research

Doing qualitative feminist research is an emotional and psychological journey in itself. It is a journey to experience the structure, processes, and relationships rather than validating set indicators of quantitative research. The methods that I used in my research speak to the reliability of my findings. However, the story behind choosing a particular field, the field experiences, and the random casual interactions that took place sometimes tell more than a set of predetermined questionnaires and formal interviews. My next post will capture those stories along with a researcher's dilemma that came straight from my heart. Today I will only focus on the methods I adopted for my research.

The study used a qualitative methodology. I used multiple methods across the research – what is known in research as triangulation. Triangulation simply means using more than one method to look at the same question from different angles, so that the findings are not dependent on any single source or approach. The more methods point to the same finding, the more reliable that finding is (Sarantakos, 2005).

The research is essentially based on the case studies of thirty women – fifteen from Khulna and fifteen from Netrokona. Each of these women was interviewed in depth, along with her family members – parents, siblings, neighbors – and community members from her village. On average, each woman's case drew on two additional respondents, bringing the total to eighty-five voices across the study. The first interview with all of them was face to face. It was crucial to break the ice, build trust, and open up the conversation. These initial meetings ran anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours, depending on the availability of the women. Factory women had very tight schedules, and repeated face to face meetings were extremely difficult to arrange. After the first meeting, follow-up phone calls were made to keep the tempo going – before she forgot the context and the conversation. Follow-up interviews were done to catch up on threads from the first meeting, fill in gaps, and check back on things that needed clarification. This combination of face to face and phone interviews served as a perfect combination for obtaining a rich data set.

In addition to these thirty in-depth case studies, the research drew on several supporting methods to build a broader picture. A pilot study of fifty randomly selected garment workers was conducted at the very beginning to test the approach and gain early insights. The pilot study findings are not included as research findings as such, but played an important role in helping me, as a researcher, to understand these women in general.

In addition, household surveys were conducted in both regions to map the socio-economic conditions of the villages. The survey captured income levels, land ownership, education, marriage patterns, and the economic contribution of RMG women to their families. This information substantiated the geo-political reasons for women's migration decisions and their contribution to households back home. For Khulna, two adjacent villages had to be combined to get a sufficient number of RMG households – a practical difficulty that in itself reflected the low migration rate from that region. Informal interviews with approximately forty villagers across both regions filled in the broader community picture.

I wanted to do a Focus Group Discussion in Khulna, but it could not be organized. The scattered settlement pattern and the very low concentration of RMG households made it practically impossible to bring enough relevant participants together in one place. However, one Focus Group Discussion was held in Netrokona with around twenty-five villagers. Even after the formal wrap-up, quite a few elderly women – mothers of RMG workers – stayed back to talk. They asked me to publicize, through this study, a need for a garment factory in their own village so that their daughters could work without leaving home. That request, made after the recorder was off, stayed with me long after I left the village. It said more about these women's aspirations – and about my own helplessness as a researcher who could listen, but could not fix. I will carry that moment into my next post.

For those interested: Key references used in this research

Afsar, Rita. (2001). Sociological Implications of Female Labour Migration in Bangladesh. University Press Limited. Dhaka.

Appadurai, Arjun. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota Press.

Dannecker, Petra. (2002). Between Conformity and Resistance: Women Garment Workers in Bangladesh. University Press Limited. Dhaka.

Feldman, Shelley. (2009). 'Historicizing Garment Manufacturing in Bangladesh: Gender, Generation and New Regulatory Regimes.' Journal of International Women's Studies. Vol. 11. No. 1.

Kabeer, Naila. (1999). 'Resources, Agency, Achievements: Reflections on the Measurement of Women's Empowerment.' Development and Change. Vol. 30.

Kabeer, Naila. (2000). The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka. Verso. London and New York.

Kibria, Nazli. (1995). 'Culture, Social Class and Income Control in the Lives of Women Garment Workers in Bangladesh.' Gender and Society. Vol. 9. No. 3.

Miller, Carol and Jessica Vivian (ed). (2002). Women's Employment in the Textile Manufacturing Sectors of Bangladesh and Morocco. UNRISD. Switzerland.

Moghadam, Valentine M. (1999). 'Gender and Globalization: Female Labour and Women's Mobilization.' Journal of World Systems Research. Vol. V. No. 2.

Paul-Majumder, Pratima and Anwara Begum. (2000). The Gender Imbalances in the Export Oriented Garment Industry in Bangladesh. World Bank Working Paper Series No. 12.

Sarantakos, S. (2005). Social Research. Third Edition. Palgrave Macmillan. New York.