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dc.contributor.authorHossain, Naomi
dc.contributor.authorNazneen, Sohela
dc.contributor.authorSultan, Maheen
dc.date.accessioned2011-12-11T06:33:19Z
dc.date.available2011-12-11T06:33:19Z
dc.date.copyright2011
dc.date.issued2011-07
dc.identifier.issn22230114
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10361/1532
dc.description.abstractAs Bangladesh turns 40, improvements in women’s wellbeing and increased agency are claimed to be some of the most significant gains in the postindependence era. Various economic and social development indicators show that in the last 20 years, Bangladesh, a poor, Muslim‐majority country in the classic patriarchal belt, has made substantial progress in increasing women’s access to education and healthcare (including increasing life‐expectancy), and in improving women’s participation in the labour force. The actors implementing such programmes and policies and claiming to promote women’s empowerment are numerous, and they occupy a significant position within national political traditions and development discourses. In the 1970s and 1980s development ideas around women’s empowerment in Bangladesh were influenced by an overtly instrumentalist logic within the international donor sphere. This led to the women’s empowerment agenda being perceived as a donor driven project, which overlooks how domestic actors such as political parties, women’s organizations and national NGOs have influenced thinking and action around it. This paper explores how these perceptions and narratives around women’s empowerment have evolved in Bangladesh from 2000 to date. It studies the concepts of women’s empowerment in public discourse and reviews the meanings and uses of the term by selected women’s organizations, donor agencies, political parties and development NGOs. By reviewing the publicly available documents of these organizations, the paper analyses the multiple discourses on women’s empowerment, showing the different concepts associated with it and how notions such as power, domains and processes of empowerment are understood by these actors. It also highlights how these different discourses have influenced each other and where they have diverged, with an emphasis on what these divergences mean in terms of advancing women’s interests in Bangladesh.en_US
dc.description.statementofresponsibilitySohela Nazneen
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityNaomi Hossain
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityMaheen Sultan
dc.format.extent57 pages
dc.languageen
dc.publisherBRAC Universityen_US
dc.relation.ispartofseriesWorking Paper No. 03
dc.subjectBangladeshen_US
dc.subjectwomen’s empowermenten_US
dc.subjectNGOsen_US
dc.subjectpolitical partiesen_US
dc.subjectwomen’s movementen_US
dc.subjectDonor agenciesen_US
dc.titleNational discourses on women's empowerment in Bangladesh: continuities and changeen_US
dc.typeWorking paperen_US
dc.contributor.departmentBRAC Development Institute (BDI), BRAC University


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