17 research outputs found
Testing Bangladesh's Waters: Evaluating an Environmental Crisis in the Geography Class
In this lesson, students assess the causes and effects of massive arsenic contamination in the water supplies of 43 of Bangladesh's 64 districts. Students evaluate why this contamination occurred, how it affects the population of Bangladesh, and why this environmental catastrophe is proving so difficult to solve. Educational levels: High school, Middle school
Canaries in a coal-mine? What the killings of journalists tell us about future repression
Globalisation, Labour Standards and Womenās Rights: Dilemmas of Collective (In)action in an Interdependent World
This paper challenges the idea that a āsocial clauseā to enforce global labor standards through international trade agreements serves the interests of women export workers in poor countries. Drawing on fieldwork in Bangladesh and empirical studies, the author argues that exploitative as these jobs appear to Western reformers, for many women workers in the South they represent genuine opportunities. Clearly, these women would wish to better their working conditions; yet having no social safety net, and knowing that jobs in the informal economy, their only alternative, offer far worse prospects, women cannot fight for better conditions. Moreover, global efforts to enforce labor standards through trade sanctions may lead to declining employment or to the transfer of jobs to the informal economy. Lacking measures that also address the conditions of workers in this informal economy, demands for āthe social clauseā will reinforce, and may exacerbate, social inequalities in the labor market