Theoretical Perspectives on Female Labor Health in Garment Export Industries: A Nexus of Economic Development, Gendered Labor, and Technological Change

Abstract

The theoretical paper examines the relationship between export-oriented industrialization, economic development that has an interlink realization in terms of female labor health based on the garment industry in emerging economies. Applying concepts drawn out of labor economics, feminist economics, and development theory it addresses the role played by occupational health outcomes of female garment workers in productivity, technology adoption and structural change. The following assumption of the paper is that sustainable economic development is impossible without gendered-sensitive health and labor policies that should be part of the national industrial and innovating policies.