Characteristics Of Selected Women Workers In Dacca City

The social tradition of Bangladesh has not favoured women workers. Their work in the home has been considered as unproductive by male dominated society. Their position was well-stated by the Secretariat of the Copenhagen Conference of 86 governments called to review the UN Decade of Women : "Throughout the developing world, a major problem is that women's work is often invisible. Her work, though vital to the task of meeting the daily needs of the family, goes unrecorded, unsupported and unrewarded" (Anonymous 1980). Women themselves have accepted their position unquestioningly. "The vast majority of our women suffer from deep-rooted inferiority complex. From their childhood they grow up to regard themselves as inferior beings, and are content to accept the subordinate position assigned to them by their family and society" (Jahan 1975). Rural poverty among the landless and near landless is forcing women to come out of the home and work, and to come to the cities as housemaids, brickbreakers, construction workers or to work at other low-status and low-wage jobs. The famine of 1974 was especially instrumental in drawing women, often deserted by their husbands, to seek survival for themselves and their children by working in Dacca city. This study exposes the life situations of those who bear simultaneously the double burden of womanhood and poverty.