Shejuti Hayat

Exploring the hidden realities of the sales work in the informal labor market Shejuti Hayat

This book examines the exploitative situation of sales girls in Dhaka, Bangladesh. This study discovers the vulnerable condition of sales girls produced and promotes by the informal labor market. This study unveils the social construction of the identity of the sales girls. Most interestingly sales girls have, too often, been portrayed as one dimensional victim-a group of powerless women under male domination vainly struggling for justice and security in Bangladeshi society. This research explores to challenge the one dimensional meaning of gender power relation. This study explores how the intersection of gender with class, culture, sex, shapes different experiences for different categories women as customers and sales girls in the sales industry. The research critically asses how the sales work create an employment sector for poor women of Bangladesh with high level of injustice, insecurity and exploitation. Here this research explores that gender is not the only factor of discrimination against sales work. Class and norms, becomes a vital factor in this context. Finally this study unveils how in one hand, the informal nature of the sales work perpetuate the exploitation over the sales girls, on the other hand how social values exclude the sales from being a decent labor in the society.