Gender sensitivity in labour migration agreements and MOUs

Global Action Programme on Migrant Domestic Workers - Research series in support of June 2016 project report release.

The invisible workers: Bangladeshi women in Oman

The purpose of this ethnography is to follow the lives of working women from Bangladesh and document and analyse the diversity of their individual and collective experiences. The findings reveal a reality that contrasts from the usual characterisations of migrant women.

This study explores the work and lives of women from Bangladesh in Oman. It is meant to be an exploratory study about the working and living conditions of women domestic workers from Bangladesh. The study lays out the context of women’s migration from Bangladesh to Oman, it’s relationship with the migration of men, the types of work and living arrangements that were encountered, the social networks of migrant women and other considerations that Bangladeshi women reflected on. This ethnographic study fills a gap on research regarding migrant workers from Bangladesh in Oman.

Migration and gender in Bangladesh: An irregular landscape

This survey is part of a series of studies commissioned by the Work in Freedom Programme of the ILO in order to document the motives and trajectories of migrant women workers. The survey explores the local and regional gendered specificities of migration and work-seeking in selected localities of Bangladesh by collecting gender disaggregated data and analysing contrasting patterns that inform women and men’s migration.

This report presents the result of a survey conducted in five districts of Bangladesh to document international labour migration. The districts were selected for their contrasting features. Two districts, Barguna and Patuakhali, are relatively new to women’s migration, whereas three districts, Manikganj, Narayanganj and Brahmanbaria, have a long history of such movement. The extent of women’s participation in migration was a major criteria for the selection of districts aimed to capture a range of situations. In all, 8,437 migrant workers were recorded in 125 villages. The analysis brings out important consideration that challenge common assumptions on women’s migration. For example, the survey brings out hard evidence that questions policy assumptions that women migrate homogenously from around the country or that their cost of recruitment is high. In that sense, this survey’s findings have important implications on local, national and regional policy making related to safe migration, anti-trafficking and labour policies.