The Role of Gender in Economic Activities with Special Reference to Women’s Participation and Empowerment in Rural Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh is known as a predominantly male-dominated society with traditional and religious beliefs that restrict women's mobility and participation in economic and social activities. This article is based on national rural representative household-level data collected in 1987 and 2000 from 62 villages in Bangladesh jointly conducted by the International Rice Research Institute and Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. First, this article depicts patterns of women's work and analyzes the factors that infl uence the gender division of labor. Second, a women empowerment index is developed from the 2000 survey data on intra-household decision-making in different spheres, and its relationship with women's work is then explored. The persistent gender division of labor in rural Bangladesh has been found to be associated with both economic and socio-cultural factors. Rural economic activities within the household were found to have a weak impact on women's empowerment.The major policy implications emerging from the study are (1) enabling and improving the quality of women's education is necessary to increase their participation in marketing activities, for which the gender disparity in earnings is less; and (2) developing desirable social and institutional infrastructures that enable women's mobility outside the home to participate in economic and social activities, and reduce the burden of their domestic work.

Economic Empowerment of Haor Women through Duck Farming in Bangladesh

“…Findings also indicated no participation of women in purchasing medicine/going to doctor for treatment of the ducks, while about 44% of haor women duck raisers were participated occasionally in feeding & collecting snails/ fish/earthworms and 14% of them participated frequently. The overall findings of participation of haor women in duck rearing activities were more focused on home-based activities which are also supported by others (Bose et al, 2009).…”

“…The WEIs as presented in Table 3 clearly indicated that women were empowered slightly above the average level in overall decision making activities. Bose et al (2009) showed that the value of the empowerment index for women is generally low, indicating that women are seldom given the opportunities to express their ideas for execution. In the study, the findings showed that the average WEI was 1.08 that means haor women are empowered through economic contributions to their family income.…”

“…Women's contribution to agricultural development is enormous (Adeokun, 2000) and half of the world's food is used to be grown by them (Corrat and Ranson, 2000) as producers, distributors, processors, storers and marketers etc. But our society is still male-dominated and women's contributions to socioeconomic development are not visible due to a set of social norms (Bose et al, 2009). A study conducted by Hossain and Jaim (2014) showed that the lack of power or disempowerment is due to their less educational level and thus reflects in less income, less control over their own income, less bargaining power in selling their own produce and labour, less participation in decision making body, less access to production inputs and resources and employment opportunity than men.…”

Gender Participation on Rice Post-harvest Activities in Bangladesh

“…Following the methodology used by Bose et al (2009), "Women decision making Index" (DMI) has been constructed in this article in consideration of women participation in household decision making process in carrying out PH activities. We assigned the lowest value (=0) when the decision is taken by male alone, in this case women being lowest "empowered".…”

Dynamics of Labour Force for Human Resource Management: A Local Economy Perspective in Bangladesh

“…A number of studies have been conducted on women's activities during 80s [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15]. These studies found that contribution of women to socio-economic development were not visible, perhaps due to a set of social norms that enabled men to dominate women [16]. In recent years, however, a large number of young girls are working in readymade garment [17].…”