According to the Bangladeshi Economic Review 2008, more than 5.5 million Bangladeshis work abroad sending billions of dollars home in remittances. Six percent of them, or 330,000, are women, says Sheikh Rumana, who became General Secretary of the Dhaka-based NGO Bangladeshi Obvibashi Mohila Sramik Association (BOMSA) – or Association of Female Migrant Workers of Bangladesh – that she helped establish when she returned home in 1998.

Besides Malaysia, many women workers go to Saudi Arabia, the United Arabic Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, or Qatar to either work in the garment industry or as household helpers; skilled laborers go to Kuwait, where they can work as medical assistants. But these are just a few of the 20 countries listed by the Bangladeshi Ministry of Expatriate’s Welfare and Overseas Employment, which also include destinations as far as Great Britain, Italy, and Japan.

Sheikh Rumana worked in the garment industry before leaving Bangladesh. Her sister was already working in Malaysia and she followed, originally seeking employment in the more lucrative Malaysian computer industry. “But I was cheated by the placement agency,” she explains. “I ended up in the garment sector [again].” Although she declines to give details, she tells my translator that she was tortured.

Once having left their home country, women workers are more vulnerable, says Dr. Kathryn Ward, professor of Sociology and Women Studies at Southern Illinois University. “Their employers and also family members sexually assault them.” In a paper on the global economic impact on urban women workers in Dhaka, which was published in Critical Sociology in 2004, Dr. Ward writes that especially private employment agencies and employers took passports from workers, broke their word about pay or the promised job, and physically and sexually abused women.

But she also says that working abroad empowers women socially and economically, even if their hard-earned income is often squandered by their family members. Instead of investing their remittances like that of their male counterparts, families often treat female-earned income as spending money.

When Ali Abbas worked abroad, he made $2,000 a month, sending $1,500 back to Bangladesh. Permanent scars on his left hand still remind him of his work in a steel mill in South Korea. Abbas also worked as a cook in South Africa, but after 15 years abroad he is now retired at age 40. He lives in the village of Doyranpur, east of Dhaka, where he and his two brothers are among the richer people in their community.

Thanks to their labor abroad, their four main houses, shared with their parents, are bigger than most buildings in Doyranpur. One reaches two stories high, an exception. Inside, Abbas enjoys the luxuries of a chest freezer, running water, electricity, a shower, and private toilets. In his dining room a wooden table with matching chairs stand where other villagers would eat on the ground. His remittances have clearly helped stake out a comfortable life for him and his family.

Back in Dhaka, after a long day in her modest office, Sheikh Rumana looks tired. She says she’s sick, suffering from headaches because she needs new glasses. Reluctantly, she starts speaking about the many illegal migrant workers that she saw abused by the Malaysian police. “They just raid the houses of the migrant workers,” she tells me. “There is no one in Bangladesh who speaks for them.”

BOMSA seeks to fill that void by working on two levels – lobbying for rights on the national level and working in the field to prepare women individually. On the political level, BOMSA seeks to establish an international catalog of rights for migrant workers. The organization also lobbies for entry and re-entry into countries that previously have expelled workers.

On the local level, BOMSA educates women on their rights and the culture, laws, and health risks such as HIV/AIDS in other countries, says Sheikh Rumana. BOMSA encourages their clients to apply for a passport and set up their own bank accounts. As many women cannot read or write – 59% of Bangladeshi women were illiterate according to the most recent census of 2001 – BOMSA works with local governments to facilitate applications to decrease dependency on recruiting agencies. Currently BOMSA operates in 11 of the 64 districts in Bangladesh with roughly 5,000 registered female migrant workers who may need a lifeline if problems arise away from home.

If BOMSA receives a call for help, Sheikh Rumana contacts the International Organization for Migration, a major donor to BOMSA in the past, which in turn works with the Bangladeshi embassy abroad to provide legal aid. BOMSA also works with other organizations to put pressure on the embassies as well as the recruiting agencies.

Sheikh Rumana is quick to emphasize that she does not want to give the wrong impression and paint a picture of “bad countries,” because Bangladeshi women need the jobs abroad. But they also need safety.

Posters with crying women line the hallway of the BOMSA offices. In front of a sepia tone poster, Sheikh Rumana stops. Pensively studying the tired and wrinkled face of a woman migrant worker, she says quietly, “She was also tortured.”



About the Author
Stine Eckert was born in a small town in East Germany. After studying Journalism and American Studies at the University of Leipzig, she came to Ohio where she reported and anchored for WOUB radio and television. She will graduate this fall with a Master’s in Journalism from Ohio University. In Leipzig, Stine co-published Twin Peaks – A Newsletter for American Studies and worked as a radio journalist for mephisto 97.6.

In her spare time, Stine blogs about her experience as a German living in the United States, goes running, and loves to watch Tatort, Germany's detective series. Stine is a Pulitzer Center Student Fellow. Her travel to Bangladesh was supported by the Center as part of its Campus Consortium initiative. To read more of her in field reporting, click here.