IJEMR –September 2016 - Vol 6 Issue 09 - Online - ISSN 2249–2585 Print - ISSN 2249-8672 www.aeph.in Livelihood and Environmental Perspective of Female Garments Workers in Bangladesh: A Study on Selected Garment Factories *Dr. Engr. Ayub Nabi Khan **S. M. Akterujjaman ***Md. Herok Ahmad ****Hafsana Yasmin *Professor & Pro-Vice Chancellor BGMEA University of Fashion & Technology (BUFT) **Assistant ProfessorDepartment of Business AdministrationBGMEA University of Fashion & Technology (BUFT) ***Lecturer, Department of Economics, Asian University of Bangladesh. ****Lecturer, Department of Fashion Design & Technology, Uttara University Abstract The rapid development of the garment sector, along with its mobilization of women workers, has made it a popular issue of concern among policy makers, activists and scholars. This paper intends to investigate the work environment, both physical and Social, of the women workers in the readymade garment (RMG) sector in Bangladesh. To that end, it attempts to identify the problems faced by the women workers, to explore the underlying reasons and to recommend appropriate measures in meeting the challenges. The study surveyed 180 workers from 30 garment factories situated in different locations of Dhaka and Gazipur area to determine the key influential factors that significantly influence on livelihood and environmental perspective of female garments workers in Bangladesh. These workers were surveyed through convenience sampling method with structured questionnaire from June to July 2016. After collection of primary data, hypotheses were formulated and one sample T-test was used to test the hypotheses with 0.05 level of statistical significance. For assuming the characteristics of data, demographic analysis, descriptive analysis and interpretations were drawn on the basis of percentage frequency, calculated mean, standard deviation (SD). In addition, empirical analyses were depicted by coefficient of variation (CV). The recommendations were provided based on the research findings and analysis. Keywords: Women workers, Readymade garment (RMG), Bangladesh, Satisfaction. Introduction The readymade garment (RMG) industry is the largest export earning sector of Bangladesh. This sector earns about 81.32% foreign currency. RMG sector has created employment opportunities especially for the women, where more than 85% of production workers are women who mainly come from the rural areas of Bangladesh (Akterujjaman & Herok, 2016). RMG industry of Bangladesh is rapidly expanding because of availability of labor especially female labor accessibility and cheap wages (Sikdar, et al. 2014). The contribution of garment workers to the growth of export-oriented industries in Bangladesh in the last decade had created opportunities for factory jobs for women. In spite of the great contribution made to the national economy the female garment workers in Bangladesh were beset with enormous complains. Such as, low payment, compulsory over-time, uncertainty of job, threaten of sack, payment withheld. As new industries expand, the labor force grew with the economy of the country, at the same time health hazards for those workers present there in various occupational diseases and accidents highly prevailed among the workers. According to Grad (2002), “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of diseases or infirmity”. Occupational health hazard is concerned with health hazard in relation to work