Bangladeshi Women Workers and Labour Market Decisions : The Power to Choose/Naila Kabeer. New Delhi, Vistaar, 2001, xvi, 464 p., $32. ISBN 81-7829-075-8.

Contents: Preface. 1. Labour standards, double standards? Selective solidarity in international trade. 2. ‘Rational fools’ or ‘cultural dopes’? Stories of structure and agency in the social sciences. 3. The changing face of shonar Bangla: background to the Dhaka study. 4. Renegotiating purdah: women workers and labour market decision making in Dhaka. 5. Individualised entitlements: factory wages and intra-household power relations. 6. Across seven seas and thirteen rivers: background to the London study. 7. Reconstituting structure: homeworkers and labour market decision making in London. 8. Mediated entitlements: home-based piecework and intra-household power relations. 9. Exclusion and economics in the labour market: explaining the paradox. 10. The power to choose and ‘the evidence of things not seen’: revisiting structure and agency. 11. Weak winners, powerful losers: the politics of protectionism in international trade. Appendix: 1. Methodological note. 2. Statistical background to the Dhaka study. 3. Statistical background to the London study. Bibliography. Index.

"In this path-breaking study, social economist Naila Kabeer examines the lives of Bangladeshi garment workers to shed light on the question of what constitutes ‘fair’ competition in international trade. While Bangladesh is generally considered a poor, conservative Muslim country, with a long tradition of female seclusion, women here have entered factories to take their place as a prominent, first generation, industrial labour force. In Britain, on the other hand, a supposedly modern and secular society with a long tradition of female employment, Bangladeshi women are largely concentrated in home-based piecework for the garment industry.

"This book draws on testimonies from both groups concerning their experiences at work and the impact these have on their lives generally to explain such paradoxes. Kabeer argues that any attempt to devise acceptable labour standards at the international level which takes no account of the forces of inclusion and exclusion within local labour markets is likely to represent the interests of powerful losers in the international trade at the expense of weak winners."

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