Bangladesh

Citation:

Bahauddin, Khalid Md., and Hamidul Huq. 2019. “Cinderella and the Missing Slipper: Gender Dynamics in Water Management in the Coastal Region of Bangladesh.” Journal of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene for Development 8 (4): 660–7.

Authors: Khalid Md. Bahauddin, Hamidul Huq

Abstract:

The water world is socially constructed, reflecting continuous gender inequalities and discrimination by those who hold dominant perspectives on water. This qualitative study was conducted in coastal areas of Bangladesh i.e. Bajua and Laodob union of Dacope upazilla of Khulna district. This study explored the gendered roles, responsibilities, and inequalities of access to and control over water management in the household, irrigation and agriculture. Results of this study lightened the importance of taking into account the complexity of power and negotiation in local water structures within women’s social realities. This study observed that there are considerable gender imbalance with regard to household activities, income generating activities, participation and mobility, ownership and control of resources, decision making power and involvement in different activities in the water management. The distinct roles and the relations between men and women may give rise to gender inequalities where one group is systematically favored and holds advantages over another. Therefore, gender mainstreaming in the water management is an integral dimension to bringing to light the concerns and experiences of both men and women. The study is convinced that dissemination of information with regards to the role of women in the water management and benefits of a gendered approach in the water sector has been neglected. There were inadequate research materials, especially locally in relation to gender, water management and women empowerment, indicating that there either has been not much research conducted to explore the top or there has been no proper documentation of research papers pertaining to the same. Possible areas of further research may include evaluating the gender mainstreaming strategies in the water and agriculture management in the southwest coastal regions of Bangladesh.

Keywords: coastal Bangladesh, gender, Inequalities, responsibility, role

Topics: Agriculture, Economies, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Households, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2019

Citation:

Sultana, Farhana. 2020. “Embodied Intersectionalities of Urban Citizenship: Water, Infrastructure, and Gender in the Global South.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers. doi:10.1080/24694452.2020.1715193.

Author: Farhana Sultana

Abstract:

Scholars have demonstrated that citizenship is tied to water provision in megacities of the Global South where water crises are extensive and the urban poor often do not have access to public water supplies. Drawing from critical feminist scholarship, this article argues for the importance of analyzing the connections between embodied intersectionalities of sociospatial differences (in this instance, gender, class, and migrant status) and materialities (of water and water infrastructure) and their relational effects on urban citizenship. Empirical research from the largest informal settlement in Dhaka, Bangladesh, as well as surrounding affluent neighborhoods, demonstrates that differences in water insecurity and precarity not only reinforce heightened senses of exclusion among the urban poor but affect their lived citizenship practices, community mobilizations, and intersectional claims-making to urban citizenship, recognition, and belonging through water. Spatial and temporal dimensions of materialities of water and infrastructure intersect with embodiments of gender, class, and migrant status unevenly in the urban waterscape to create differentiated urban citizens in spaces of abjection and dispossession. The article argues that an everyday embodied perspective on intersectionalities of urban citizenship enriches the scholarship on the water–citizenship nexus.

Keywords: citizenship, embodied, infrastructure, intersectionality, urban, water

Topics: Citizenship, Class, Migration, Urban Displacement, Economies, Poverty, Feminisms, Gender, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2020

Citation:

Bhatta, Gopal Datt, Pramod Kumar Aggarwal, Santosh Poudel, and Debbie Anne Belgrave. 2015. "Climate-induced Migration in South Asia: Migration Decisions and the Gender Dimensions of Adverse Climatic Events." Journal of Rural and Community Development 10 (4): 1-23.

Authors: Gopal Datt Bhatta, Pramod Kumar Aggarwol, Santosh Poudel, Debbie Anne Belgrave

Abstract:

There is significant interest in determining the role of climate-induced shocks as a prominent driver on migration decisions of different groups of farmers in South Asia. Using data from a survey of 2,660 farm-families and focused group discussions in Bihar (India), Terai (plains) (Nepal) and coastal Bangladesh, we employed logistic regression to investigate household response towards migration and gender dimensions of adverse climatic events. The results suggest that migration decisions depend on farmers’ unique resource profiles: (a) households that use migration to improve their resilience, mostly resource rich households; (b) households that have no alternative but to migrate, mostly poor farmers; and (c) households who cannot migrate due to different socio-economic obligations, mostly farmers with intermediate level of income that also includes women, children and elderly of different income profiles. These profiles represent a spectrum with households within a profile being closer to one or the other of the profiles on either side. They are not mutually exclusive and serve as a point of departure for further research to refine key explanatory variables. Given that some members of the household pursue migration as a result of adverse climatic events, government strategies are required to mitigate risks at destinations and create opportunities for the trapped populations.

Keywords: distress migration, climatic risks, extreme events, rainfall variability, gender dimensions, South Asia

Topics: Agriculture, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Climate Displacement, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Women, Households Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh, India, Nepal

Year: 2015

Citation:

Kieran, Caitlin, Kathryn Sproule, Agnes R. Quisumbing, and Cheryl R. Doss. 2017. "Gender Gaps in Landownership Across and Within Households in Four Asian Countries." Land Economics 93 (2): 342-70.

Authors: Caitlin Kieran, Kathryn Sproule, Agnes R. Quisumbing, Cheryl R. Doss

Abstract:

Using nationally representative data from Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam, this paper investigates which individual and household characteristics influence men’s and women’s landownership across and within households. Often neglected in household-level statistics, married women in all countries are landowners. Across different household structures, women own less land than men, and less land relative to the household average as household landholdings increase. Increasing gender inequality with household wealth cannot be consistently explained by an increasing share of household land devoted to crops. Findings support the need to strengthen women’s land rights within marriage and to protect them should the marriage dissolve.

Topics: Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Households, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania Countries: Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Vietnam

Year: 2017

Citation:

Chenoy, Anuradha M. 2002. Militarism and Women in South Asia. New Delhi: Kali for Women.

Author: Anuradha M. Chenoy

Annotation:

Topics: Economies, Poverty, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarization, Security Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka

Year: 2002

Citation:

Akter, Shaheen, and John Farrington. 2011. “What Determines Poverty Transition? An Investigation of Women Livestock Farmers in Bangladesh.” Development in Practice 21 (2): 269–81.

Authors: Shaheen Akter, John Farrington

Abstract:

Keywords: gender and diversity, Labour and livelihoods, technology, South Asia

Topics: Agriculture, Economies, Poverty, Gender, Women, Households, Livelihoods Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2011

Citation:

Sulley, Rosa. 2018. "Re-Conceptualising Gender and Urban Water Inequality Applying a Critical Feminist Approach to Water Inequality in Dhaka." DPU Working Paper No. 195, Development Planning Unit, The Bartlett, University College London.

Author: Rosa Sulley

Abstract:

Commonly, urban water inequality has been conceptualised in scholarship and policy as a fixed issue; little attention has been given to dynamic changes over time, space, identity, and relations. Influenced by traditional feminist critiques of development and of who suffers the responsibilities of water management, the consequence has been a focus on women. However, gender mainstreaming approaches aiming to empower women are often critiqued for (re)producing static narratives, and overlooking the multiple experiences and processes of (re)production of inequality. This paper places itself within this debate, aiming to enhance analytical approaches to studying urban water inequality and challenge pervasive simplified, homogenised accounts of urban water inequality. Through critical application of recent conceptual shifts in feminist theorising, it brings together Feminist Political Ecology and Intersectionality literatures to formulate a framework for analysis of urban water inequality. This explores the role and importance of relational subjectivities, power dynamics, hydrosocial relations, and dynamic relations across and within micro and macro scales. The paper focuses on how these dynamics manifest in Dhaka's informal settlements. Bangladesh shows the complex and multi-layered nature of both how water inequality is (re)produced, and how people negotiate it in their everyday lives. The insights, particularly findings of informal and formal fluidity, are then reflected upon in relation to the framework and future research agendas.

Topics: Development, Economies, Economic Inequality, Environment, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Political Economies Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2018

Citation:

Jost, Christine, Florence Kyazze, Jesse Naab, Sharmind Neelormi, James Kinyangi, Robert Zougmore, Pramod Aggarwal, Gopal Bhatta, Moushumi Chaudhury, Marja-Liisa Tapio-Bistrom, Sibyl Nelson, and Patti Kristjanson. 2016. “Understanding Gender Dimensions of Agriculture and Climate Change in Smallholder Farming Communities.” Climate and Development 8 (2): 133-44.

Authors: Christine Jost, Florence Kyazze, Jesse Naab, Sharmind Neelormi, James Kinyangi, Robert Zougmore, Pramod Aggarwal, Gopal Bhatta, Moushumi Chaudhury, Marja-Liisa Tapio-Bistrom, Sibyl Nelson, Patti Kristjanson

Abstract:

In Uganda, Ghana and Bangladesh, participatory tools were used for a socio-economic and gender analysis of three topics: climate-smart agriculture (CSA), climate analogue approaches, and climate and weather forecasting. Policy and programme relevant results were obtained. Smallholders are changing agricultural practices due to observations of climatic and environmental change. Women appear to be less adaptive because of financial or resource constraints, because of male domination in receiving information and extension services and because available adaptation strategies tend to create higher labour loads for women. The climate analogue approach (identifying places resembling your future climate so as to identify potential adaptations) is a promising tool for increasing farmer-to-farmer learning, where a high degree of climatic variability means that analogue villages that have successfully adopted new CSA practices exist nearby. Institutional issues related to forecast production limit their credibility and salience, particularly in terms of women’s ability to access and understand them. The participatory tools used in this study provided some insights into women’s adaptive capacity in the villages studied, but not to the depth necessary to address women’s specific vulnerabilities in CSA programmes. Further research is necessary to move the discourse related to gender and climate change beyond the conceptualization of women as a homogenously vulnerable group in CSA programmes.

Keywords: gender, participation, climate change, agriculture, smallholders

Topics: Agriculture, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Gender Analysis Regions: Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh, Ghana, Uganda

Year: 2016

Citation:

Ali, H. M. Ashraf, and Helen Vallianatos. 2017. “Women’s Experiences of Food Insecurity and Coping Strategies in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh.” Ecology of Food and Nutrition 56 (6): 462-78. 

Authors: H. M. Ashraf Ali, Helen Vallianatos

Abstract:

Despite advances in food production and distribution technologies, global food insecurity continues throughout parts of South Asia. Using ethnographic data collected from the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in Bangladesh, this article reports on gendered and ethnocultural variations in experiences of food insecurity. Three key findings are that (1) regardless of ethnicity, the majority of the households in this study suffered moderate food insecurity; (2) food insecurity was higher among female-headed households; and (3) women’s means of coping strategies varied depending on household structure and ethnic identity. It is argued that indigenous women’s coping strategies were protective in comparison with Bengali women’s experiences.

Keywords: Bangladesh, CHT, coping strategies, food insecurity, women

Topics: Environment, Gender, Women, Households, Indigenous, Livelihoods, Food Security Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2017

Citation:

Sultana, Farhana, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, and Sarah Miraglia. 2016. “Gender Equity, Citizenship and Public Water in Bangladesh.” In Making Public in a Privatized World: The Struggle for Essential Services, edited by David McDonald, 149-64. London: Zed Books Ltd.

Authors: Farhana Sultana, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Sarah Miraglia

Annotation:

Topics: Development, Economies, Poverty, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Governance, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Political Economies Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2016