Women’s Political Participation in Bangladesh Pranab Kumar Panday Women’s Political Participation in Bangladesh Institutional Reforms, Actors and Outcomes 1 3 Pranab Kumar Panday Department of Public Administration University of Rajshahi Rajshahi Bangladesh ISBN 978-81-322-1271-3 ISBN 978-81-322-1272-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-1272-0 Springer New Delhi Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2013935770 © Springer India 2013 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Foreword How does one begin to contextualize women’s participation in political life and the kinds of institutional reforms that make this possible? What is the relationship between institutional reform and the presumption of the emancipatory possibili- ties that are opened up by such reform? In what ways do institutional reforms that address women’s interests reverberate in the body politic? In particular, how might one think creatively about the role of electoral reform movements, struggles for gender equality, and women’s empowerment in Bangladesh? Interestingly, Bangladesh continues to play a critical role as a “test case for development,” in ways that showcase the variety of innovations that alter business as usual in development practice. Beginning with the birth of the country in 1971, and the programs and activities that emerged soon thereafter, an innovative cadre of civil society institutions and non-government organizations (NGOs) engaged Paolo Freire’s ideas about conscientization that included a focus on the needs and interests of women. These efforts helped to organize rural dwellers and provided several strategies to address women’s diverse needs and secure their rights. Many of the projects that emerged during this time were critical in creating awareness among rural women and incorporating them among those targeted to participate in NGO activities including, at the time, informal education and training. Some of these initiatives were also critical in highlighting sources of gender inequality and women’s lack of access to productive resources, as well as in linking projects to action in ways that sought to establish the conditions necessary to empower women. To be sure, these efforts were part of a larger, global engagement of the place of NGOs in generating opportunities for social change, where Bangladesh, even under military rule, recognized United Nations initiatives that proclaimed the period 1975–1985 as the decade for women. While a host of reasons explains the rationale behind this early support, its significance in signaling the impor- tance of women’s participation in realizing social change cannot be underes- timated. Moreover, through the policies and processes begun in the early 1980s that attended to the promotion of industrialization via export promotion, women’s labor has been recognized as the backbone of its success, as their cheap labor has been critical to debt servicing and to the recognition that Bangladesh continues to receive as an emerging producer of garments for the world market. While the v vi Foreword garment sector has been applauded for employing women when no other sector had previously done so, it also has been challenged for taking advantage of wom- en’s need for employment and, despite struggles for improved working conditions and salary, they continue to receive extremely low wages. There is an enormous body of research that has elaborated upon the successes and limitations of these initiatives, but what is evident in the period since, is that such programs have helped to alter the lives and livelihoods of rural women. Alongside changing economic demands on individuals, families, and communi- ties, coupled with the availability of new resources—from credit and cell phone availability to enhanced education for girls—the lives of rural women have changed in ways that many thought unlikely in the early 1970s. One measure of these changes is the increasing number of women who, as recipients of rural credit, are sometimes able to initiate activities that provide income and employ their skills and resources in new ways. Together, these shifts unsettle women’s rel- ative exclusion from public space and from the constraints that have limited their participation as political leaders and active participants in their communities. And although women’s position in processes of social, economic, and political change continues to be exclusionary and unequal, their demand for engagement in the political process continues to grow. Women’s Political Participation in Bangladesh: Institutional Reforms, Actors, and Outcomes, written by Pranab Panday, a committed scholar of public adminis- tration and a keen researcher, begins to address the question of gender inequality on the political stage by querying the effects of specific institutional reforms on the political participation of women in local governance. His book draws atten- tion to the passage of the Local Government Ordinance, 1976 and the Local Government (Union Parishads) (Second Amendment) Act, 1997 to secure a grow- ing number of seats at the Union Parishad level for women. This institutional reform is positioned against the backdrop of longer-term changes that have chal- lenged the patriarchal hold of women’s opportunities in the country and reveals the excitement among women as candidates and as members of local constituencies. Crucially, Panday acknowledges the criticality of introducing reserved seats for women in local government bodies through direct election to public office, includ- ing highlighting the significance of such changes for bringing women into political conversation with local leaders at the Union Parishad level. He also highlights the important empowering effects that this reform has for rural women. Importantly, too, he is wise to be cautious about the broad changes that actually attend to this singular institutional reform thereby concluding that despite the electoral support that women members receive, local male political leaders continue to behave in discriminatory ways toward their female fellow leaders. With evidence drawn from an in-depth appreciation of a site in Rajshahi District, Panday documents, for instance, the unequal distribution of specific resource allocations that serve to dif- ferentiate among the opportunities enjoyed by female and male local leaders, and shows that despite the large size of some women’s constituencies they still do not garner equitable access to institutional and community resources. Foreword vii Despite these seemingly contradictory findings, Panday recognizes that chal- lenges to gender inequality are now more public, and a growing number of women leaders and constituents are now more directly involved in building local level capacity. This evidence-based assessment of what has been altered with the pas- sage of the 1997 Amendment—that the opportunity to elect a woman UP member has led to women’s increased involvement in local electoral politics and decision making—also reveals the enormous work that must follow in its wake, particularly if women are to become full members as political leaders in the country. Yet, what Panday has made evident from these experiences in Rajshahi is that the place of women in the political and economic life of Bangladesh has forever been altered. Ithaca, NY, USA Shelley Feldman Cornell University Preface For the last couple of decades, women’s involvement in politics and in leadership positions has been the subject of debate. Since the early 1970s, the United Nations has advocated for greater women’s participation in the political decision-making process. As an outcome of different advocacy programs, the heads of government in the Beijing conference in 1995 signed the Platform for