Pathway to Productivity and Leadership: Evolution of Female Garment Workers in Bangladesh

The garment sector has contributed to an increase in women’s labor force participation in Bangladesh. But while women are now a majority of the sector’s 4.2 million workers, women’s representation in management roles remains low. We conduct an evaluation of an IFC program that successfully increased the share of female line supervisors in 50 participating factories from 10 percent to 18 percent. We find that sewing machine operators supervised by the women rate them more favorably than a matched sample of male supervisors. Moreover, while productivity on the lines the women manage is lower than the matched comparison lines in the first six months following the program, women catch up to the male-managed lines after that and, indeed, significantly outperform the male-supervised lines after two years of experience.