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# Gendered exit and displacement: Social reproduction and automation in Bangladesh's garment industry

## Details

**Authors** Deb and Rahman

**Year** 2026

**Publisher** Current Sociology

**Discipline** Sociology

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1177/00113921261467792) 
10.1177/00113921261467792

## In authors' words

### Abstract

Women have long underwritten the global garment industry while disproportionately bearing the burden of its coercive labor regimes. In Bangladesh—the world’s second-largest apparel exporter after China—this feminization was widely celebrated as a development success that incorporated millions of women into formal employment. Yet the narrative is fraying: women’s share of the ready-made garment workforce has fallen from roughly 80% in the 1980s to about 50% today. What explains this retreat from an industry once framed as a conduit to empowerment? Drawing on a survey of 285 former women garment workers, five focus-group discussions, and 16 key informant interviews, we theorize defeminization as the outcome of two analytically distinct yet mutually reinforcing mechanisms. First, gendered exit reflects the institutional devaluation of social reproduction: care burdens, scarce childcare provision, and stringent factory discipline render women’s employment precariously contingent. Second, gendered displacement and resegregation accompany technological upgrading as machine-adjacent and supervisory pathways expand, while exclusionary training and patriarchal narratives channel these roles toward men. The article presents evidence from former workers to show how export-oriented restructuring under technological intensification reorganizes gender hierarchies within global production networks.

### What they found (results)

From a survey of 285 former women garment workers plus interviews, Bangladesh's ready-made-garment workforce has defeminised from about 80% women in the 1980s to about 50% today, attributed to two mechanisms: gendered exit, where care-work devaluation pushes women out, and gendered displacement, where automation channels new machine-adjacent roles to men through exclusionary training.

## Commentary

### In short

One macro outcome is decomposed into two sub-mechanisms — a part–whole move — and each is then given a direction of effect on the outcome.

**Patterns it shows** S, R

**Added** 2026-08-03

**How to cite this** Deb and Rahman (2026). Gendered exit and displacement: Social reproduction and automation in Bangladesh's garment industry. Current Sociology.