Women in Bangladesh are generally perceived as caregivers, often confined within the households to perform various activities, whereas men are perceived as the providers. These complex gendered roles intersect with multiple factors such as household structure, marital status, religion, cultural beliefs, economic shocks, and livelihood opportunities. This study used the feminist political ecology framework to contextualize and analyze time allocated toward unpaid works, culturally accepted as female/gendered activities, and the nuanced power dynamics between men and women within the rural households of Bangladesh. We used the household survey data collected from the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey of 2015 to create a multiple linear regression model that helps understand the impacts of economic, cultural, and environmental shocks on the total time allocated toward unpaid activities by women within the household. Results suggest women who experienced climate-change shocks such as crop losses due to disasters and non-climatic shocks such as dowry tend to allocate more time toward unpaid tasks. In contrast, women who own their businesses tend to give less time toward unpaid tasks. This study provides guidelines for necessary gender-sensitive national policies to address the United Nation’s goal of gender equity and sustainable development.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.