Description of Project:  The Project started on 21 August 2009 and ended on 30 November 2009.The overall purposes of the survey were:

• • to examine how employment opportunities (particularly in the garment sector) and expanded access to education have affected the lives of Bangladeshi women today;

• to examine how employment and education affect a woman’s marriage conditions (and whether she marries a close relative), her status within the household, and the health and education of her children; and

• to examine how garment workers obtain job in the garment sector and what factors affect their careers in the garment sector.

Tasks carried out by Mitra:

Methodology (sample size & tools): In each selected village first conduct a census to create a list of all baris. Then interviews was conducted on HHs. 800 households near the EPZ (“near” households) plus 400 “far” households farther from EPZ (i.e. not within commuting distance). The “near” villages were within commuting distance (where it was possible for a garment worker to live at home and travel daily to the garment factory). One way to ensure this was to contact several factories and ask which villages the factory buses visit to pick up workers. Then randomly selected villages from the set of reported pickup locations. The “far” villages were in an area that’s otherwise similar to the “near” villages (in terms of wealth, other employment options, social structure), except that it’s not within commuting distance to the EPZ.

Questionnaire: Preparation of Survey modules with tentative length of each Household head 15 pages, Spouse/female head 15 pages, Married female Supplement 4 pages, Garment worker supplement 6 pages; household listing/mapping and tested finalized and translated in Bengali.

Data collection: Data collected and ensured the quality of data.

Data processing: Double entered the data and produced miss match report, edited and cleaned.

Client Reference: University of Colorado, Procurement  Service Ctr, Accts Payable DC 119, PO Box 173364, Denver, CO 80217-3364 USA.