260
Special Economic Zones
Figure 11.3 Female Share of Employment in SEZs by Sector, Select Countries, 2009 garments electronics other manufacturing textiles food & beverages services metal & metal products wood, paper & wood prods. chemicals 0
20
40
60
80
female share of employment Source: World Bank 2009–10. Note: The countries across which data are pooled include Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, Tanzania, Senegal, and Vietnam.
predominate in light industries that are gender-typed as female, such as garments, electronics, and textiles, while their share of employment is reduced quite starkly in chemicals, wood products, and metals. The lack of comprehensive statistics on female employment disaggregated by sector and industry in SEZs globally poses a challenge, although case studies provide ample evidence at the country or SEZ level of the concentration of women in particular activities. In general, women tend to predominate in the low-paying and low value added segment of export production. In Madagascar, for instance, 64 percent of the enterprises in SEZs were in the textiles and clothing industry and they engaged a workforce that was 71 percent female (ILO 2005, 47). Similarly, in Bangladesh, the female share of employment in the garment industry of the Dhaka EPZ was 72 percent, while it was 23 percent in the nongarment industry (Zohir 2001, 13). In Sri Lanka,