Changing attitudes to women migrant workers
Date:
Author: Sharmin Akter
For Firoza Akter, migration to Kuwait offered the chance of a better life for her and her children. In 2002, she took a 50,000 taka loan to go to Kuwait and work as a hospital cleaner. Within a year, she had earnt it all back.
“But I suddenly caught jaundice, so I had to return to Bangladesh,” she recalls. “If I could have stayed for just a few more years I could have earnt a lot more.”
In 2012 she joined NARI – the Network for Advocacy, Research and Information - for women migrant workers, developed with the support of UN Women Bangladesh. NARI connects women migrant workers from different districts, helping them skill up, educating them on government rules and regulations for migration, negotiating with recruitment agents, and encouraging them to share their experiences with aspiring and returning migrant workers.
The hardest part of returning for Firoza, was the community gossip and her loss in stature. “After coming back from abroad, my relatives and neighbours used to talk ill about me. They would say that that good women never goes to abroad for work,” she remembers. “But after the training from NARI I faced those people boldly and I explained that their thinking is not right. I am grateful to NARI because I got this confidence and training to tackle this kind of thinking.”
“Now I have been with NARI for the last three and a half years,” she notes. “I have learnt so many things after joining the network. I took computer training, training in how to help others through NARI, and training to understand how to successfully navigate the migration system as a woman. I have been involved in so many activities of the network and I have been able to lead lots of women from my area to safely migrate overseas through following government procedures, and accessing the right facilities.”
“I really want NARI to flourish. They need to spread their work more and more and to take steps through media such as radio and television to broadcast various awareness programs so that we can change people’s mentality and attitude towards women migrant workers.”
UN Women Bangladesh is working to improve migrant women’s leadership through the NARI trainings, and empowering them to be advocates for themselves and others throughout the migration cycle. UN Women is also working on a four-year regional project that aims to improve the laws that govern migrant workers employment through development of standard terms of employment. Having these standard terms means migrant workers are ensured of their entitlements to their salary and leave, and will be protected if employers don’t meet their obligations towards them, when they leave their country of origin through to their destination.
Firoza has plans to go abroad again, this time with her children. Her elder son and daughter are currently studying Bachelor of Business Administration degrees at university, while her younger son is still in school. “After my children are finished studying, we will all go abroad again. I am learning the language, and I intend to stay the rest of my life working abroad, hopefully back in Kuwait.”