Economic Pathways to Women’s Empowerment and Active Citizenship: What Does The Evidence From Bangladesh Tell Us?

Abstract

This paper sets out to explore economic pathways to women’s empowerment and active citizenship in Bangladesh, a country where the denial of economic resources to women, and their resulting status as lifelong dependents on men, has long been seen as foundational to their subordinate status. The paper draws on the existing literature on women’s access to various forms of paid work both to assess their impact in terms of empowerment and citizenship and to understand better the processes by which these changes might occur. This work is part of the ‘Choice, constraints and the gender dynamics of labour markets in Bangladesh’ project supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and the UK Department for International Development