Thoth distribution@thoth.pub Google 20260826T142142

urn:uuid:38d26bff-897c-42b3-bb96-eb94984d1391 03 15 9781911712244 00 EB E101 10 01 01 Renegotiating Patriarchy Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox 1 A01 Naila Kabeer Naila Kabeer (FAcSS) is Professor of Gender and Development in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and on the faculty of the International Inequalities Institute at LSE. She has carried out several years of interdisciplinary research on gendered inequalities in relation to labour markets, livelihoods, social protection and collective action. Her publications include Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought (Verso), The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decision-Making in London and Dhaka (Verso) and Mainstreaming Gender and Social Protection in the Informal Economy (Commonwealth Secretariat). She has worked in an advisory capacity with a number of international and bilateral agencies as well as national and international non-governmental organisations. She is on the editorial boards of Feminist Economics and Gender and Development and on the international advisory boards of Development and Change and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies. She is also on the advisory boards of the United Nations Research on Social Development (UNRISD) and the United Nations University – Institute for Global Health and has recently joined the UN Women’s Leaders Network. 01 eng 00 356 03 04 HC 10 SOC050000 10 2.3.1.0.0.0.0 10 POL024000 10 SOC028000 01 06 03 00 The idea of the ‘Bangladesh paradox’ describes the unexpected social progress that Bangladesh has made in recent decades that 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 in 1971, seemingly trapped in a development impasse. Previous attempts to explain this paradox have generally taken a top-down approach, focusing on the role of leading institutional actors – donors, government, NGOs and the private sector. In Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox, Naila Kabeer starts with the rationale that policy actions taken at the top are unlikely to materialise into actual changes if they are not acted on by the mass of ordinary women and men. But what led these women and men to act? And why did they act in ways that modified some of the more oppressive aspects of patriarchy in the country? That is what this book sets out to investigate. It describes the history of the Bengal delta, and the forces that gave rise to the kind of society that Bangladesh was at the time of its independence. It considers the policy and politics that characterised post-independence Bangladesh and how these contributed to the progress captured in the idea of the Bangladesh paradox. But the key argument of the book is that much of this progress reflected the agency exercised by ordinary, often very poor, women in the course of their everyday lives. Their agency helped to translate institutional actions into concrete changes on the ground. To explore why and how this happened, the book draws on a rich body of ethnographic, qualitative and quantitative research on social change in Bangladesh – including studies by the author herself. 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. 04 00 1. Unravelling the paradox: meaning, motivation and methodology 2. Frontiers and crossroads: economy, politics and culture in the Bengal delta 3. ‘The test case for development’: policy debates in the aftermath of independence 4. Behind the grim litany: researching a development impasse 5. Defying the prophets of doom: the emergence of the Bangladesh paradox 6. ‘My children have a future’: fate, family planning and the capacity to aspire 7. ‘Standing on your own feet’: the making of a female labour force 8. ‘We follow shariat, but we follow marfat too’: contestations over gender and Islam in the nation-making project 9. Unruly sons, compassionate daughters: reconfiguring the intergenerational bargain 10. Resolving the paradox: concluding reflections LSE Press 01 LSE Press 04 01 20240926 02 WORLD 06 15 9781911712220 06 15 9781911712237 06 15 9781911712244 06 15 9781911712251 WORLD 09 LSE Press 20 01