SIUC sociologist helps "soiled" women in Bangladesh make the transition to legitimate jobs
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They call her Jezebel, this 5-year-old scarlet Toyota Corolla, and the Muslim women in Bangladesh who are learning to drive her -- well, you could call them jezebels, too. The polite term, though, is "sex workers." "They don't like to be thought of as prostitutes," says Kathryn B. Ward, an SIUC sociologist, who bought them the car. "They see what they're doing as work." Still, it's a line of work they'd like to leave, and that's where Jezebel may help them shift gears. It's Ward's idea that these women could become chauffeurs: for internationals like her, for families and women -- and even, in this traditional Muslim country, for men. Ward doesn't foresee any problems there. "Of all the women in the world, who better knows how to deal with men than sex workers?" she says with a twinkle in her eye. No driving instructor ever had more motivated students. "They take their lessons between 6 a.m. and 7:30 because that's when the streets are safest, and one woman has to get up and go all the way across town for class," Ward says. "They're really committed." How did such unlikely women make such an unlikely career U-turn in a land where the burka is staging a comeback? The story began in Dhaka last April when a group of hotel and home-based sex workers got together to talk about common concerns and deal with shared problems. Ward, whose research focuses on women's work in an era of global restructuring, was there at the time doing fieldwork. Her driver introduced her to the group's sponsor, who happened to be his cousin, and then the sponsor introduced her to them. "They were like nobody I'd ever met before," Ward says. They make, for women in Bangladesh, a lot of money. They are, for the trade, relatively well educated. Many have families who depend on their wages. And most want to do something else with their lives. That's where they hit their first roadblocks. "Society doesn't give these women alternatives -- there's still such a stigma in a culture where women are supposed to be exclusively one man's property," Ward says. "Even if they've been raped, they're still 'soiled' -- no one wants them. "What gets me is that women who have been trafficked (sold into the trade) as young girls and are now 35 and 40 don't want to be madams -- they don't want to see anybody else in sex work -- but the agencies and other nongovernmental organizations don't want anything to do with them because they're 'bad' women. "The training these organizations do offer -- candle-making, embroidery, sewing, handicrafts -- are for jobs that don't pay well, have no markets and may disappear. What we're trying to do here is show on a small scale that other alternatives can and do work." In searching out alternate routes to a living wage, Ward has turned as well to drives of a different sort. Computer-savvy women could work in banks and offices managing databases, installing hardware and software, and making repairs, she reasons, so 12 women are learning to maneuver their way around a keyboard. Thinking that the women will have more options if they learn English, or at the least become literate in their own language, Ward has hired a tutor -- using money sent by her mother. "Mom's a feminist, and being a former English teacher herself, she thought this was OK," Ward says with a grin. There's also a savings program. "They have all this money going through their fingers every week, but a lot of them didn't even have a bank account," Ward says. "If they save 10 percent of what they make and if they pool their money (women must pay 100 taka -- a little more than $2.50 -- to join the group), they could do a lot of things, and they wouldn't be beholden to a donor. By the time I left in August, nearly all of the 50 or so members had opened bank accounts." While sex workers started this group, Ward wants to broaden its reach. "My idea is that these facilities should be available to all women seeking new skills or more education," she says. "I've seen some crossover already. I don't know that they're socializing, but they are at least coming to the same office. I think that's a good thing." Ward sees some urgency in helping this crossover along. The Bangladesh garment industry, a mainstay for the country's women workers over the last several decades, has taken some hits in the last few years as multinational corporations, in the constant search for ever-cheaper labor, have shuttered their plants and moved away. In 2005, with the end of the Multifiber Arrangement (a set of trade agreements that have made textiles and clothing produced in developing countries cheap to buy), the industry will suffer another crippling, perhaps fatal, blow. Where will these displaced garment workers go? Ward's research shows that some will head off to sweatshops, some will become servants, some will take out tiny loans to set up even tinier businesses -- and then there's the more lucrative sex trade. "If you don't give them any alternatives, what other resources do they have?" Ward says. "They have children to support." Ward hopes that as her "graduates" began succeeding in their new fields, the group will attract support from agencies with deeper pockets than she and her mother have. In the meantime, she's not above a little begging. Donations could hire another tutor, buy books and supplies, she notes. And $20 each month would just about keep Jezebel in fine style. "New drivers are tough on clutches," Ward says with a laugh. Serving others is among the goals of Southern at 150: Building Excellence through Commitment, the blueprint for the development of the University by the time it marks its 150th anniversary in 2019.
-- K.C. Jaehnig
November 19, 2003