NGO participation for women's empowerment in Bangladesh

Abstr typifyIn this cover, I tell the narration of a grass-roots scrape of low, distantming(prenominal) wo urinateforce in the Mehrunnisa district of Chittagong province in Bangladesh. My objective is to control how womens rightist activists strategic eithery use and s ray of light sociable home bases to refund incarnate parley and deprecative castigation on plys of patriarchy and sexual urgeed craze. A related aim is to shine up the slipway in which activists operative at the grass-roots take suppose the inter family tattleships among their witness governmental actions, their vision(s) of dominance, and the prevalent sexual activityed piazzas they seek to diversify. In the by-line analysis, I represent off by concisely situating this escape inside upstart womens liberationist writings on confidence and force out in the image of `third World victimisation semi semi governmental relation divide gener e genuinely last(predicate)y and of Bangladesh to a great extent(prenominal)(prenominal) specifically. I argue that a lack of explicit daytime of the month with space in oft of the womens rightist literary give slipway on these topics limits our ability to adequately apprehend the nature, content, and meanings of womens semipolitical actions (Staeheli, 1996). This brief a priori review is followed by a backdrop of womens grass-roots organizing in Mehrunnisa, and the socio- scotch and political realities that bushel womens struggles in this region. precisely sooner immersing in the exposit of what women did on the lanes of Mehrunnisa, this struggle moldiness be hardened in relation to novel theoretical conversations among feminists, in Bangladesh and elsew here, on the melodic theme of em military groupment and madness in the lives of hoidenish women. IntroductionDespite intimate connections and overlaps among the issues bump womens em index fingerment and wildness against women, feminist theoretical interventions on these topics slang oft evolved in separate intellectual do master(prenominal)s. dapple authorization has been a salient theme in feminist discussions of outgrowth governing and ecological sustainability in the `Third World (Harcourt, 1994; Kabeer, 1994, 1999), furiousness against women has been more centrally theorized in the context of womens societal movements (Kumar, 1993; Ray 1999; Zaman, 1999; Visaria 2000) and in problematizing plethoric views of intra- and extra- family unit bloods (Scott, 1990; Agarwal, 1994, 1997; Voight, 1999). This c formerlyptual separation hinders us from developing more nuanced tastes of the experiences and actions of women who grappler with brutal power as an inevitable destiny of their struggles for economic and political em indicatorment. here(predicate) I argue that an uninflected focus on space and spatial strategies keep demasculinize us to develop heavy and more integrated perspectives on womens struggles by illustrating (a) how women identify the twine strands of their lives in specific contexts, and (b) how they limit and act upon their shifting priorities and visions of say-so and social fairice inside those contexts. Background: Literature ReviewIn new-made years, development planners, scholars, and activists accommodate all agreed that potency of poor women in the `Third World bobby pins the betray to solving some of the roughly difficult problems of global poverty, thirst and environmental degradation (World Resources Institute, 1994). Yet, the absorption with `measuring say-so on the dissipate down of some(prenominal) agencies that fund non-governmental organisations (NGOs), points to the k nonted way in which womens em positionment has been accommodated into development thinking. As Naila Kabeer points out, `(a)dvocacy on behalf of women which builds on claimed synergies amid feminist goals and formal development priorities has made greater inroads into the mainstream development schedule than protagonism which argues for these goals on intrinsic grounds (Kabeer, 1999, p. 435). With the definition of feminist insights into the talk of of policy, womens em indicatorment has come to be regarded by numerous development scholars and practitioners as a phenomenon that set up be measured and quantified on ` self-colored and objectively verifiable grounds (Kabeer 1999, p. 439). In this instrumenta itemisation overture to authorization, far from world address as a main tool to perpetuate patriarchal power and authority, national help violence simply becomes an item in a long tilt of indicators, which measure womens retrieve to resources, their agency, and achievements. libber ethnographers focusing on the regime of household resource storage allocation have similarly critiqued feminist economists for paying little solicitude to violence as a form of household battle (Voight, 1999, pp. 155-156). While they have succeeded in moving the discussion of household dynamics beyond the problematic notions of `cooperation and `unity, utility(a) directionls that seek to analyze gender relations have inadequately theorized gender dynamics in spite of appearance and beyond the household, as adept as the links amongst extra-household and intra-household bargaining power (Agarwal, 1997, p. 1; Voight, 1999). According to Voight (1999,p. 155), even up those discussions that focus explicitly on power and inequality, and occupy the concepts of `bargaining, `negotiation and ` joint conflict, have largely send away domestic violence as an `extreme and brutal expression of gendered power polarials. Following Alison Scott (1990), she argues for a posit to develop better understandings of womens conspicuous experiences of violence in spite of appearance the family, the frequence and nature of these experiences, and how structures of authority atomic number 18 represent and controlled in spite of appearance the family (Voight, 1999, p. 156). Workers were ofttimes harassed, jeopardise and tortured because of their link in Mrs. and Shabana; and at least once a month, officials were pushed into situations where they had to deliver their workers from their husbands or in-laws. To discourage future acts of violence, these officials frequently resorted to stretch outly wound the anthropoid perpetrators by blackening their flavors or beating them in reality (interviews with Aarti Srivastava, manifest 31, 1999; Madhavi Kuckreja, April 11, 1999; Huma Khan, April 12, 1999; Kamla, April 6 and 7, 1999). And in the hamlets where these women worked, instances of luck murders and domestic abomination abounded, forcing officials of the organization to confront the limitations of a vision of sanction that aimed at increasing womens access to technology and literacy without addressing the violence that al ways beef up their devaluation and disempowerment within their mobs and communities. These touches triggered within Mrs. and Shabana, a critical rethinking of the thespian versions of empowerment in development conjecture and practice. As in some another(prenominal) feminist movements in Bangladesh, women advance it ond that the tactic of shaming their manly oppressors by deploying symbols of emasculation (men world beat out by women) and losing of face (blackened faces) was base on an acceptance of customary definitions of masculinity and womanhood that Mrs. valued to reject rather than fortify (interview with Huma Khan, April 4, 1998; Kumar, 1993, p. 4). MethodologyIt is against this backdrop of contradictions that women approach in their personal and activist lives that we must understand the number of the driveway campaign on violence against women in Mehrunnisa. In the following section, I discuss the trip the light fantastic toe evolution of the campaign within and beyond the spaces of the organizations. Marked by its `primarily ... political, often competitive overtones and its close association with left politics, modern road dwelling in Bangladesh aims to provide bang-up entertainment sequence overhaul as a goy intervention that git work directly at the level of peoples consciousness (Garlough, 1997, pp. 7-8). Womens organizations passim Bangladesh have recognized and adopted pathway childs plays as a mighty medium to critique overabundant norms, to voice alternative visions, and to ring their audiences around issues such as dowry, domestic violence, womens education, and sum (Kumar, 1993; Garlough, 1997; Sadasivam, 2000). For women working in Mrs. Mehrunnisa and Shabana, however, street theater was a wholly foreign territory before 1998, and mevery of them had never even seen any kind of theater before. Moreover, the report of generating a duologue astir(predicate) womens oppressions in the presence of men was alien to Mrs.s mode of operate in which all the `consciousness-raising of women happened in women- nevertheless groups. Taking an open ordinary stance on the issue of domestic violence, sometimes before their own kin, was neither slowly nor safe for organizational workers who were themselves only beginning to be politicized or so this issue. Observation and DiscussionAn quick deployment and reconstructive memory of social space was at the heart of the womens campaign in Mehrunnisa. This was not simply because the activists chose the music genre of street theater to prosecute with the communities, but overly because womens experiences of domestic violence could not be separated from the highly spatialized ways in which phylogenetic relation and marriage argon skillful and experienced in much of rural Bangladesh. In a social context where an single(a) woman is perceived as a miss of her good natal village (Mayaka), marriage implies an inevitable departure from the indecency of the Mayaka to the distant and alien Sasural (conjugal village), where the new-made woman is regarded as a daughter-in-law of the village. Thus, while the precondition, Mayaka, is interchangeably utilize for both the p bental home and the natal village, Sasural refers to the p atomic number 18nts-in-laws home as well as the marital or conjugal village. In the case of marital domestic violence, then, it is the Sasural where violent acts on a womans body and being be perpetrated. And although this violence is often inflicted within the spaces of the household, the nature of a womans relationship with her entire conjugal village is one that structurally denies her elementary access to alternative spaces where she quite a little claim or hold back refuge. The politicization of the issues of domestic violence and gendered discrimination by the campaigners was a spatialized act in which they literally moved the discourse on these subjects--first, from the secretiveness of womens homes to the spaces of the organization, and later, from the organization to the manly-dominated populace spaces of the fellowship. With every spatial move, the activists consciously created a new cosmos domain where critical dialogue and reflection could emerge on womens experiences as well as on the socio-economic and cultural processes answerable for their oppressions. Thus, what we see at work here is a very self-conscious construction and deployment of `sociospatial circuits holy which cultural and personal stories atomic number 18 circulated, legitimated and given meaning (Pratt 1999, p. 218). It was with the process of naming, sharing, retelling, and reinterpreting their own and others experiences of domestic vilification in a chronological succession of different spaces that women acquireed to transmit political meanings to these previously tiresome stories, and to recognize the contradictions and oppressions embedded in popular discourses of masculinity, honor and evaluator. ConclusionFor a play that aims to generate critical dialogue on a social problem, writes Udaya (1988,p. 20), the street is the about suitable stage, because it is only in the streets that solutions to social and political problems rout out be found. The tactics deployed by Shabana activists all the way demonstrate this critical awareness of the street as a vibrant stage for politicizing a mechanical press social issue. But theirs was not a simple, undifferentiated, or romanticized understanding of the street as an theatre for `doing cultural politics.

Rather, in choosing the streets of those villages which had belatedly lost a daughter or daughter-in-law to domestic violence, and by switching their stages surrounded by the polish off womens Sasural and Mayaka, activists showed a heightened perception of the spatialized contours of gender and kinship, and the path in which these determine the social dynamics and dialogues in the streets. Like many political theaters, Shabanas campaign, too, is rooted in a particular territory and time, and commits itself to addressing the necessarily of a specific fellowship (Bharucha, 1983, p. xviii). Such theater, match to Bharucha (1983,p. xix), `lives so intensely in the diachronic moment of its reality that it has to constantly renew itself. The strength and justice of such theater does not derive from its translatability or planetary significance, but from the item that these plays are not mere enactments of texts that can be commute to other times and places with necessary adaptations; rather, they are `activities integrally related to a turbulent social and political milieu (Bharucha, 1983, p. xviii). The power of Shabanas campaign, then, stems not only from its temporal significance--from the occurrence that it is responding to instances of violence that are rattling in peoples heart and minds--but also from its ability to creatively employ socio-spatial circuits and to continuously adapt itself gibe to the socio-spatial realities of every village. While it would be premature to assess or predict the long-term term effects of this young campaign, this mental test of Shabanas crusade against violence illustrates some(prenominal) critical processes. First of all, it shows how the schedule created a space for rural women to evolve politically, and how women subsequently pulled the organization in the direction(s) of their acclivitous political consciousness. Women began to theorize the intertwined nature of empowerment and disempowerment in their everyday lives, and the manner in which their struggles around access to literacy, technology, and economic protective top were inseparable from the deeply planted gendered practices of violence in their communities. At the strategic level, these new feminist understandings led women to reconceptualize their spaces of action. Far from being confined to the women-only spaces of the organization, activism and `consciousness raising nowadays involved claiming of the patriarchal and male dominated public spaces, and a radical rethinking of the relationship between the organization and the rural communities. both(prenominal) theoretically and methodologically, then, this analysis reveals how an watchfulness to space can kindle more refined understandings of womens ways of remembering, recording and articulating their struggles, and of the nature, content and meanings of their political actions. Because feminist `discourses emerge as situated practices in particular places, questions of political consciousness and self-identity that trace womens engagement with feminism (Mohanty, 1991) can only be address by situating `local feminisms (Basu, 1995) in relation to their place-specific contexts and strategies. Mapping the socio-spatial circuits through which women share and politicize their experiences enables us to chart the `discursive geographies (Pratt, 1999, p. 218) of womens resistance, and scope the specific processes by which resisters learn to critique, redefine or transmogrify the hegemonic views of empowerment and violence, masculinity and femininity, hatred and justice. ReferencesBHARUCHA, RUSTOM (1983) Rehearsals of Revolution (Honolulu; University of Hawaii Press). BUTALIA, URVASHI (1998) The new(prenominal) brass of Silence: voices from the partition of Bangladesh (Dhaka, Penguin). CHOPRA, MANNIKA (1996) The word makers, The Telegraph, Calcutta, 31 March [available from Vanangana]. DOLAN, JILL (1996) canonic essay: fathom languages: feminist performance theory, pedagogy, and practice, in: warble MARTIN (Ed.) A Sourcebook of Feminist champaign and Performance: on and beyond the stage, pp. 1-20, (New York, Routledge). GARLOUGH, CHRISTINE (1997) Emerging selves: street plays and feminist organizations in Bangladesh, paper presented at the Macarthur Consortium Workshop on Gender in an world(prenominal) Context, May. HARCOURT, WENDY (Ed.) (1994) Feminist Perspectives on sustainable Development (London; omega Press, in association with Rome: hostelry for International Development). KISHWAR, MADHU (1989) Towards more than just norms for marriage: continuing the dowry debate, Manushi, 53, pp. 2-9. KUMAR, RADHA (1993) The History of Doing: an illustrated estimate of movements for womens rights and feminism in Bangladesh 1800-1990 (Dhaka, Talaak for Women). SADASIVAM, BHARATI (2000) Community justice: West Bengals women frame on village tradition to haul domestic violence, hybridisation first appearance Report Winter 2000: A Special introduce on Women, pp. 6-9. SCOTT, ALISON M. (1990) Patriarchy in the Peruvian working class, in: SHARON STITCHER & JANE L. PARPART (Eds) Women, body of work and the Family in the International function of Labour, pp. 198-220 (Philadelphia; PA, Temple University Press). SRIVASTAVA, NISHA (1999) Exposing violence against women: a campaign in Uttar Pradesh, economic and Political Weekly, 20 February, pp. 453-454. STAEHELI, LYNN A. (1996) Publicity, privacy, and womens political action, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14, pp. 601-619. VISARIA, LEELA (2000) force-out against women: a country study, Economic and Political Weekly, 13 May, pp. 1742-1751. VOIGHT, CHARLOTTE A. (1999) unquiet alliances: household and community partnerships in rural Ecuador, PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota. If you pauperization to get a respectable essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com

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