TRANSITIONS TO ADULTHOOD
Livelihoods

Bangladesh: Savings Among Female Garment Workers

In Bangladesh, where the majority of the garment factory work force is young and female, the Council is engaged in a project intended to help young women maintain control of their income by making formal bank accounts available to them at their work sites. Most workers do not have access to banks and therefore have no safe way to guard their earnings. Facilitating workers’ control of their income is key to fostering their ability to make their own decisions about what they do with their income (whereas if workers give their earnings to family members for safekeeping, their decisionmaking may be compromised). Establishing economic independence may have longer-term effects on a worker’s ability to make decisions about whom and when she marries and about childbearing.

Locations
Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Mali

Population Council researchers
Annabel Erulkar, Arjmand Banu Khan, Carey Meyers, Anjali Widge

Non-Council collaborators

Jennefer Sebstad

India:
Self-Employed Women’s Association
Mahila SEWA Trust

Kenya:
K-REP Development Agency

Donors
The Ford Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Turner Foundation, Inc.
U.K. Department for International Development
United Nations Children’s Fund 

See Also

• Transitions to Adulthood Home
  • Creating Safe Spaces
  • Child Marriage/Married Adolescents
  • Livelihoods
  • Schooling
  • Very Young Adolescents