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This report focuses on a project which looks at resurgent Islam and its influence on the formation of female identities and sexualities. The researchers explore the ways in which women in their daily lives engage with religious tenets and observance, focusing on new forms of religious organization and the appeal it has for women of various classes. …

This report in Bangla focuses on a project which interviewed members of the Chittagong Hill Tracts communities to examine their views on mainstream media and how it was failing in portraying their everyday lives. …

As Bangladesh turns 40, improvements in women’s wellbeing and increased agency are claimed to be some of the most significant gains in the post-independence 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. …