Women participation in labour force rises

In the last five years, overall female participation in the country’s labour force has increased from 36.3 per cent to 42.67 per cent. However, women’s involvement and employment in urban areas have decreased.

According to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey 2022 (provisional) of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the country currently has a 25.93 million strong labour force. It was 20 million during the last survey conducted in 2016-17.

At present, Bangladesh has 24.99 million females employed, which was 18.6 million in the last survey. The young female labour force has also almost doubled in the last five years.

Experts said that millions of new entrepreneurs have been created in the past two-three years, thanks to e-commerce boost, improvement in communication and increased literacy rate. Most of them are women and that helped increase female participation in the labour force.

The rise also happened as many women had to get jobs to support their families after the main breadwinners lost their jobs.

However, experts said, reduced female participation in the urban areas and increased participation in rural areas indicate that the country’s economy is not doing well.

“What does this mean? It indicates that citizens left urban areas for rural due to a crisis of job and work opportunities. Both men and women are struggling to survive,” Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh’s Executive Director Ahsan H Mansur told The Business Post.

Urban participation down

As per the International Labour Organization (ILO), anyone above 15 years old and eligible to work is counted as the labour force. If anyone can work at least one hour a week for himself or herself, they are countable as employed.

The BBS report showed that Bangladesh has 4.31 million women in the labour force in the urban areas, where 4 million are employed. In the 2016-17 survey, the numbers were 5 million and 4.6 million, respectively.

On the other hand, in the 2022 survey, the rural female labour force was 21.62 million and 20.99 million were employed. It was 15 million and 14.1 million, respectively, in the previous survey.

In the last five years, women’s unemployment has reduced to 0.94 million from 1.3 million, while the country’s total unemployed reduced to 2.63 million from 2.7 million, according to the survey.

Ahsan said, “It is not a good sign for the economy and contradictory to the 8th Five Year Plan. We have failed to ensure enough private investment in the formal sector to create

jobs, which forced people to leave urban areas.

“If the government wants sustainable development, they need the engagement of the labour force in the urban areas.”

He, however, added, “Currently, the female education rate has increased, and educated women are trying to do something, wherever they live. The government should create strong policies in favour of CMSMEs, which will help to boost the macroeconomy.”

Youth female labour doubled

As per the ILO methodology, people between 15-29 years of age in the workforce are considered the youth labour force.

The BBS survey showed that 26.82 million new youths were included in the labour force in the last five years. Among them, 13.31 million are female, which was 7 million in the 2016-17 survey.

Five years ago, urban areas had 2.2 million female labourers, which has gone down to 1.69 million. On the other hand, female youth labour in rural areas went up from 4.7 million to 11.62 million at the same time.

Nasima Akter Nisha, president of the Women and E-commerce (WE) Forum, told The Business Post that during the Covid-19 pandemic, most families fell into a major financial crisis, and women members, especially 20-30 years old, rose to support them.

“Our survey found that most of the women got involved in e-commerce and agriculture sectors amid the pandemic. But when the pandemic situation eased, urban women returned to their regular family duty but rural women remained involved in the business,” she said.

“Our survey also found that many families left the cities after the family heads lost their jobs. Now the families are struggling to survive in the rural areas and their women members are supporting them,” said Nisha, who leads an association of 4 lakh women entrepreneurs.

She added, “Many women have set up small factories, many are involved in farming, and many are working as day labourers. But participation in the city areas has reduced due to a lack of work opportunities.”