How to Speed Up the Jobs-to-Careers Transition
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TABLE 5.1 Policy Recommendations to Increase FLFP and Women’s Transition from Jobs to Careers in Seven Middle-Income Countries (continued) Policy recommendation
Implementation considerations
Increase access to education to promote female participation in careers
Increase upper-secondary enrollment and entry points to the industry
Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan
Reduce information gaps on available career paths
All
Reform legal barriers that reduce women’s access to and permanence in employment opportunities
Bangladesh; Egypt, Arab Rep.; Pakistan; Sri Lanka
Promote inclusive workplace practices
All
Engage foreign support and involvement
All
Break glass ceilings
Countriesa
Source: World Bank. Note: FLFP = female labor force participation. a. Policies can be addressed by all seven countries studied in this report; however, some are more relevant to specific countries based on our results.
The overall message is that these countries should use the apparel industry as a launching platform to overcome the fixed costs of introducing more women into the labor market. But for this strategy to work, they must implement complementary policies that tackle the barriers that hinder women in their pursuit of long-term labor force participation and better-paid occupations.
Increase Participation of Female Production Workers in Export-Oriented Apparel Manufacturing and Related Industries Among manufacturing industries, apparel provides one of the few opportunities for females with lower-secondary education or less to enter the workforce. The women are hired to work on the production line (as sewing machine operators and other assemblyrelated positions), an occupation that covers 70–80 percent of all apparel workers. Their skills are considered low in industry, but evidence from Southeast Asia and some Latin American countries suggests that acquiring the baseline skills for assembly-line manufacturing helps workers to move from apparel to electronics, medical devices, and automotive production when the time to upgrade between industries arrives in the country (Bamber and Frederick 2018; Bamber et al. 2019).
