Trade Liberalisation as Development Strategy in Bangladesh: Are Labour Standards Part of the Equation?

This paper’s main focus is the labour systems associated with labour-intensive production of export manufactures and, more accurately, the role of women workers in industrialising Bangladesh. The labour market is one of the main channels through which globalisation has impacted on the Asian economies, and it is instructive to study the differing experiences of workers engaged in cross-border production networks. The paper is divided into four sections. The first sectionexamines Asia’s past and present interactions with globalisation, while the second looks at the performance of the Asian economies in a period of extraordinary growth in world trade. The third section examines the changing economic role of women in the context of the global restructuring of manufacturing. The fourth outlines the provision of adequate labour standards and how they have beenadopted in Bangladesh’s labour laws.