6:38 AM
Maksuda
Changes in land-population patterns in rural areas are having an impact on gender relationsand on the position of women throughout Bangladesh.
First, the continuing fragmentation of holdings is leading to fewer households being constituted in the form of the extended family. This is associated with a loss of security for women from the family network and with reduction in the scope for sharing household tasks. Concurrently, women’s normative entitlements to social support beyond the family are weakening. Thus women are becoming more vulnerable to extreme poverty and destitution.
Second, women’s work possibilities outside the homestead have declined: The increase
observed in women’s involvement in field wage labour is outweighed by technological
displacement of paddy husking, rice milling and other work. Inside the household, women’s
work is of increasingly low productivity among the poorest deciles as the asset base of more
households declines.
Second, women’s work possibilities outside the homestead have declined: The increase
observed in women’s involvement in field wage labour is outweighed by technological
displacement of paddy husking, rice milling and other work. Inside the household, women’s
work is of increasingly low productivity among the poorest deciles as the asset base of more
households declines.
The recent rise of the (unIslamic) dowry based marriage system is a manifestation of these changes. It signifies that women are increasingly seen as an economic burden by both ‘wife-giving and ‘wife-receiving’ families. It also contributes to further rural differentiation: richer families are able to profit from loaning dowry money to poorer households and claim their assets on default.
Growing numbers of the rural poor are therefore migrating to urban slums. Urban poverty,
particularly of female-headed households, deserves much more analytical and policy
attention, even though it runs counter to the main thrust of Government policy to reduce
rural-urban migration. In urban settings, women are in a no-win situation. Household prosperity enables men to put their women into purdah and claim social credit thereby, but where household poverty and distress drive women to seek outside wage employment, it is they who suffer social opprobrium and loss of status, because it involves the breaking of purdah. The intensification of Islamist forces exacerbates this problem.
Source: Bridge Development Gender
Posted in: RESEARCH
