Renegotiating Patriarchy

The idea of the ‘Bangladesh paradox’ describes the unexpected social progress that Bangladesh has made in recent decades, which has been both pro-poor and gender equitable. This began at a time when the country was characterised by extreme levels of poverty, poor quality governance, an oppressive patriarchy and rising Islamic orthodoxy. This ‘paradox’ has evoked a great deal of interest within the international development community because Bangladesh had been dubbed an ‘international basket case’ at the time of its independence, seemingly trapped in a development impasse. In this book, Naila Kabeer describes the history of the Bengal delta and the forces that gave rise to the kind of society Bangladesh was at the time of its independence. Drawing on a rich body of ethnographic, qualitative, and quantitative research on social change in Bangladesh, the author presents her central argument that much of the country’s progress reflected the agency exercised by ordinary, often very poor, women in the course of their everyday lives. The book is therefore about how norms and practices can change in progressive ways, despite unpropitious circumstances, as a result of the efforts of poor women in Bangladesh to renegotiate what had been described as one of the most non-negotiable patriarchies in the world.