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The system of reserved seats with direct elections to local government bodies has been in place for women since 1997. This article investigates how perceptions have changed about the role of women representatives in local government. By exploring the accounts of women's views, experiences and how they negotiate various structural and attitudinal obstacles, and the changes in the wider sociopolitical context, the article shows that women representatives have gained greater voice and social legitimacy in representing specific types of‘women's issues. ’These gains were partly a result of the supportive policy directives and mechanisms created by the state. …

Why is the extent of women’s work in Bangladesh under-reported? In Bangladesh women are engaged in a variety of economic activities from homestead-based expenditure saving activities to outside paid work. However, women’s work generally remains under-reported by official statistics, especially women’s non-market homestead-based economic activities, and even tends to be overlooked by women themselves. Non-recognition of women’s economic activity leads to undervaluation of women’s economic contribution and is also seen as a reason for their lower status in society relative to men. The consequences for women are immense, especially poor women, in terms of their own self-esteem, the value accorded them by their family and community and even in terms of their identity as citizens of Bangladesh. …

The debate about the relationship between paid work and women’s position within the family and society is a long standing one. Some argue that women’s integration into the market is the key to their empowerment while others offer more sceptical, often pessimistic, accounts of this relationship. These contradictory viewpoints reflect a variety of factors: variations in how empowerment itself is understood, variations in the cultural meanings and social acceptability of paid work for women across different contexts and the nature of the available work opportunities within particular contexts. This paper uses a combination of survey data and qualitative interviews to explore the impact of paid work on various indicators of women’s empowerment ranging from shifts in intra-household decision-making processes to women’s participation in public life. …

This report in Bangla focuses on the project which involved two components - a survey and qualitative interviews. A survey of 5,200 women, aged 15 and above, of different socio-economic backgrounds in Bangladesh was done to compare the impact of various kinds of work on women's lives. …

This article questions whether affirmative action and training of women politicians leads to effective voice and change on issues that are relevant for women. The authors examine the case of Bangladesh, which has an affirmative action policy for women in government, and consider the barriers that women in politics continue to face, as well as the doors that are opened to them through their role in politics. The Bangladesh case shows that the advent of direct elections has established a direct link between the constituency and women members. This, in turn, has given women a stronger voice and more legitimacy as political actors. …

For poor women paid work is not simply a pathway out of poverty, but has more deeper transformative potential, including both internal transformation (changes in women's personal and political consciousness and agency as citizens) and external transformation (changes in women's social position). Hence, measurement of women's empowerment requires identifying appropriate qualitative indicators to capture these dynamic processes of change that are not all observable. We were faced with two crucial measurement challenges: first, to estimate the magnitude and nature of women's paid work that is often unrecognised, and second, to assess a transformative process like women's empowerment. The paper describes the methods used for enumerating women's economic activity and measuring women's empowerment in the context of Bangladesh, using quantitative indicators estimated from a large household survey. …

There have been a number of debates in Bangladesh, as well as elsewhere, as to whether women's experience of paid work is empowering or simply exploitative. The Bangladesh survey was designed to explore these hypotheses with a view to clarifying a) whether it was primarily the kind of work (pay, location, hours, independence of activity) which might differentiate women's experiences of paid work or whether it was the possibility for new relationships and networks that made the main difference. If the former, we would expect home based work for little pay, carried out on an irregular basis to offer least possibility of empowerment. If the latter, we would expect that it would be women's membership in different kinds of groups and associations, which might encompass home-based microfinance activities, to make the significant difference. …

Drawing on household survey data collected in Egypt, Ghana and Bangladesh as part of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Partners’ Consortium, this report provides insights into the ‘resource’ pathways that enhance women’s agency and thereby contribute to the inclusiveness of the economic growth process. Moreover, it looks at the the extent to which the structure of economic opportunities, generated by a country’s growth strategies, translated into positive impacts on women’s lives in these three country contexts.  …

At the Millennium Summit world leaders committed to reducing extreme poverty through a series of targets encompassed within the MDGs, with a deadline of 2015. One of these was to promote gender equality and empower women, and the ‘proportion of seats held by women in national parliament’ was set as a key indicator. With the MDG Review Summit meeting in September 2010, this is an opportunity to consider whether the proportion of women in parliament continues to be the most adequate proxy for women’s political empowerment. This IDS Bulletin explores what the quota has meant as a motorway to women’s accession to political power by drawing on research findings from the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consortium (‘Pathways’), as well as a series of articles from a special seminar in the Brazilian National Congress as part of this programme, and contributions from other country case studies. …

In Bangladesh women are engaged in a variety of economic activities ranging from homestead based expenditure saving activities to outside paid work. However, women's work always remains under reported, especially women’s non‐market homestead based economic activities. Under reporting is particularly critical in the case of official statistics. The types of work women are involved in are often overlooked by women themselves. …

This bulletin is devoted to exploring what the quota has meant as a motorway to women's accession to political power. It draws on research findings from Pathways, as well as presentations given at a special seminar held in the Brazilian National Congress. The bulletin raises the questions of who are the women who are best positioned to benefit from the quota as a fast track option, what are they enabled to do once in office via the quota seats, and what kind of gender agendas does the critical mass of women who have come to power via the quota espouse and advocate? …

This project investigated the enabling conditions for women’s participation in local governance and its influence on women’s empowerment. The objectives for this study were to explore the challenges faced by women councillors, how they negotiate these challenges, their own interpretation of their engagement patterns and processes, and whether new gender norms and roles are being created for women in the public domain. …

This research project explored how paid work can change women’s lives in terms of dealing with the public sphere and institutions, accessing services, commodities, resources, information, reducing isolation, increasing negotiation/bargaining skills, ability to protect themselves, etc. The context under which work can be empowering and the kinds of work that change lives was compared through comparisons of similar research undertaken by the West Africa and Middle East Pathways regional hubs in Ghana and Egypt. …