Resources

Short article which illuminates one woman's demand for more empowered representations of women on Bangladeshi TV. …

The research on Media and Women has sought to explore how women in urban and peri‐urban areas in Bangladesh engage with television and attach meaning to images and representations. The research explored the politics of viewing rather than politics of representation; to take that which for long been objectified and turn it into subject. The report outlines the dominant narratives seen by women on television in Bangladesh and describes how women negotiate with other members to watch their preferred programmes on television. The processes of reception and interpretation of women in relation to media narratives has been explored to reveal how television is creating avenues for negotiation and participation, opening up new spaces for women. …

Young women are increasingly experiencing greater visibility and mobility in Bangladeshi society. The new public spaces they occupy together with the more traditional private spaces are greatly mediated by the narratives beamed on television. This article looks at how Bangladeshi women engage with television and the meanings and choices they derive from it. It examines which elements the women choose to adopt and which they discard as being alien to their lifestyles. …

Television in Bangladesh has captured imaginations across economic, socio-cultural and political boundaries. The paper, presented to 'Pathways: What are we Learning?' Analysis Conference, Cairo, 20-24 January 2009, outlines how women in urban areas engage with television and attach meaning to images and representations that may or may not have been addressed to them. The authors’ aim is to trace how the producers of media envision their desired subjects and the multiple ways in which women receive these images and narratives - at times drawing parallels with their own lives, at other times rejecting their messages, and still often being captivated by illusory worlds that have little resemblance to their own. It is this crossing between reality and fantasy that the television offers that the paper will seek to elaborate. …

The global HIV/AIDS pandemic has pushed sexuality issues higher up on the development cooperation agenda but the sexual health and rights of lesbian women and other women who have sex with women are often completely missing from sexual and reproductive health and rights policies, materials and documents. Karin Lenke and Mathilda Piehl are concerned that this underlying homophobia and heteronormativity will lead to these women being unable to enjoy their full human rights in any field. …

This presentation to the Pathways South Asia Hub Final Conference held in Dhaka from 26-28 July 2011 outlines research which, in the light of a seemingly contentious relationship between state, religion and modernity in Bangladesh attempts to understand the historical antecedents of tensions in the modern Bengali Muslim woman and how she negotiates religion. The historical research begins from the early twentieth century to trace the formation of the idea of a Bengali nation to its source. Its focus is through literature and journals which expressed the thoughts and desires of Bengalis, and became the site where language, nationhood and the place of woman in the nation were debated. …

The subject of women’s paid work has been much researched and debated, with many proponents of women’s empowerment seeing it as the most important means to achieve this. However, the experience of work has been nuanced, with discrimination reproducing itself in access to work, the kinds of work available to women and the terms of their engagement. Nevertheless, paid work has a tremendous potential to bring about change sin gender relations and women’s position. This chapter looks at trends in women’s employment in Bangladesh, and the various sectors and types of women’s paid employment and at the successes and constraints in each. …