A new study has been initiated “Using Text Messages to Provide Garment Workers Access to Job Information” which relies on the factory data of Mapped in Bangladesh (MiB) project.

This study is supported by the Women’s Economic Empowerment and Connectivity (WEE-Connect) initiative of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Aligning with the objective of the WEE-Connect initiative, the study addresses whether access to cell phones is sufficient to provide information about job vacancies of garments factories to women.  These factories are to be sampled from the database of Mapped in Bangladesh as it is the only database that can provide detailed geolocation data of all the export oriented garments factories in Bangladesh. As part of this study, the factory management, mostly HR managers, are to be surveyed to collect the information about job vacancies while the workers will also be surveyed, and will be provided the information about job vacancies in factories within 5 km of their neighborhood.

It can be expected that garments factories will be benefitted from the study because the study collects information about job vacancies from factories and provides the information to individuals who are looking for garment sector jobs in the areas where factories are located and might be qualified for the vacant positions that the factories are trying to fill.

Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (CED), BRAC University (BRACU), is conducting the main surveys and follow up surveys on factory managements in the areas of Dhaka, Gazipur and Narayanganj. For this project, CED-BRACU is collaborating with Dr. Rachel Heath, Professor, University of Washington (US); Dr. Laura Boudreau, Assistant Professor in the Economics Division at Columbia Business School, Columbia University (US); and BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD).

On September 9 and 10 of 2024, CED-BRACU organized a training of Field Officers (FOs). In this training, the FOs were given instructions about the detailed protocol of the study for collecting information from garments factories through the survey instruments that have been developed for this study.

The study has been designed based on the previous study “The Roles of Information and Search Frictions in Determining Working Conditions in Bangladesh’s Apparel Sector” in 2023 and its successive pilot study in 2022. Both of those studies had current team composition where CED completed the surveys on factory management to collect information about job vacancies and factories were sampled using Mapped in Bangladesh.

Dr. Laura’s Quote:

Our partnership with MiB was crucial for this research project’s success. MiB has a singular ability to collect information from factory management, which is a very challenging population for researchers to reach. We are very grateful for our strong partnership and collaboration with MiB.”