Women Empowerment, Supply Chain Linkages and FDI: Evidence from Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper studies foreign direct investment spillovers on the gender-related labour market practice of domestic firms, based on a unique firm-to-firm data set of Bangladesh’s textiles and garment sectors. The paper looks at the female employment of domestic firms that are directly and indirectly related to foreign- owned firms through supply chain linkages. These domestic firms are either the local suppliers or customers of foreign-owned firms, or they share local suppliers and customers with foreign-owned firms. The estimates show that domestic firms related to foreign-owned firms have significantly more female administrative workers, but not necessarily more female non-administrative workers, owing to the former participating in more firm-to-firm interactions.