Malnutrition can adversely influence the health and development of women and their children. In Myanmar’s Yangon region, a significant portion of young women employed in the formally regulated garment sector is impacted by malnutrition. Through data collection at the individual, factory, and community levels, Sophie Goudet, Lwin Mar Hlaing (National Nutrition Centre, Ministry of Health and Sports), and Paula Griffiths assessed the food security and nutrition of Yangon’s young female garment workers.
They found that these young women have poor nutritional quality, restricted food intake, and ate less preferred foods. Risk factors for not meeting minimum dietary diversity were related to migration patterns, employment, food security, and living conditions. Sophie and the research team also offered policy recommendations and identified interventions to promote nutrition in the workplace for this vulnerable group of workers.
You can read the full paper by Sophie Goudet, Lwin Mar Hlaing, and Paula Griffiths here.
Background
Industrial growth has been driving rapid urban development and rural-to-urban migration. Serving as a key contributor to Myanmar’s industrial growth, the ready-made garment (RMG) sector is a labor-intensive industry employing a workforce of nearly 400,000, of whom 90% are young women. Specifically, young women ages 15-19 years old make up an important portion of the RMG factory workforce.
In 2020, 10% of the Myanmar population is expected to rely on the garment sector for basic needs and more than one million people could be employed.[1]
The expansion of this sector could bring an additional $10 billion USD annual turnover, assuming barriers, such as the limited skills of workers, poor infrastructure, protectionist legislation, and political uncertainties, are overcome.
Women in the RMG sector typically migrate from rural areas with the explicit purpose of working and sending money back to the family. However, these young women often face issues in factories such as unhealthy and unsafe working environments, improper food and nutrition, and excessive working hours. In addition, women frequently encounter discrimination, sexual and verbal harassment, and lack of maternity allowances.
Young women migrating to cities are an important survival coping strategy for rural poor populations. However, the garment work environment poses health challenges for these women, particularly food insecurity and inadequate nutritional consumption.
Sophie’s research hypothesized that drivers of food insecurity and inadequate nutritional consumption for this vulnerable population would be dependent on employment conditions (e.g. hours worked, salary and training received) and other factors influenced by employment (e.g. food environments, housing conditions, and food security in the household).
Using an ecological approach, Sophie and the research team assessed the status and influencing factors on the food security of young female garment workers from Yangon’s peri-urban communities and engaged stakeholders in acting upon risks.
Dietary diversity and food security
Given that most workers come from poor households, it was anticipated that young women who recently migrated were in poor health. However, results showed no significant difference between women who migrated less than 1 year ago versus longer-term migrants when exploring women’s hunger, thirst, and anemia signs at work.
Forty-seven percent of young women met the minimum dietary diversity for women (MDD-W; a proxy indicator of diet quality); they consumed five or more food groups (out of 10 food groups) on the day before the interview date. The main food groups consumed were rice, bread, meat, poultry, fish, and vegetables.
In addition to the minimum dietary diversity indicator, Sophie and the research team utilized the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) score as a measure of the degree of food insecurity (regarding access) in the household within a 30-day period.
HFIAS scores for the women showed that 50% were food secure, 27% were mildly food insecure, 14% were moderately food insecure, and 8% were severely food insecure.
With regards to access, households experienced issues related to restricted food variety, food preference, and adequate food quantity more frequently.
18% of participants reported their households lacked sufficient food to meet their dietary needs within the past 12 months.
Risk factors for poor nutrition were analyzed using a categorical minimum dietary diversity measure for women as the dependent variable. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression models demonstrated that the quality of diet among women is associated with conditions in the household, in the environment, and at work.
Policy recommendations
Based on the findings, a set of policy recommendations was discussed, including actionable factory-level recommendations and more complex recommendations requiring support from urban food system policies and regulations. These recommendations incorporate not only interventions that are evidence-based and validated but also interventions that were expressed by stakeholders but for which further research and analysis are needed.
At the factory level:
- Provide space for women to cook in housing facilities and facilitate access to fresh foods.
- Create a positive environment in factories for women and their future children.
- Conduct more research on the provision of free or subsidized foods in factories.
- Conduct more research on the cost-effectiveness of implementing anemia prevention and treatment programs (iron supplement, multiple micronutrients, or food fortification).
At the national, regional, and city levels:
- Support improvement of quality and hygiene of food sold by street food vendors near factories.
- Support a food cash allowance for young women.
At the community level:
- Support community-based nutrition interventions.
At the individual level:
- Educate young women on financial literacy.
The findings, presented at the individual, household, and factory levels, showed that young women in the RMG sector frequently encounter poor quality of nutrition and food security issues. However, Sophie's research offers recommendations and identifies areas for interventions on food- and nutrition-specific programming and healthy food access that are wanted by stakeholders and are evidence-based. These recommended interventions are intended to generate comprehensive research, data, and benefits to fill in the evidence gaps identified and provide guidance on how to promote nutrition in the workplace for this vulnerable group of workers.
[1] Estimate reflects pre-COVID-19 data.
Dr. Sophie Goudet is a Senior Technical Advisor for Nutrition working with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). You can view more of her work through her website here. Dr. Lwin Mar Hlaing is Deputy Director of the National Nutrition Centre of the Department of Public Health, Ministry of Health and Sports, Myanmar. Dr. Paula Griffiths is a Professor of Population Health under the School of Sports, Exercise, and Health Sciences at Loughborough University.
The opinions expressed here belong solely to the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of IFPRI or the CGIAR. This blog post was prepared by Michael Wang, Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow at IFPRI.