In charting Bangladesh’s remarkable progress on a range of social indicators since the 1970s, Naila Kabeer explores the critical role played by women’s agency. How were women able to challenge existing gender norms in the context of the “lived” Islam of their culture? What are the lessons of this episode – and what nuances are offered vis-à-vis the more “universal” path to progress and emancipation generally assumed by Western feminists?
When Bangladesh gained its independence in 1971, it was among the poorest countries in the world. Its high fertility rates had given rise to a Malthusian-scale population explosion, it had a malfunctioning economy, constant food shortages, recurring natural disasters and what was described as an extreme form of patriarchy. Its people were malnourished, largely illiterate and did not live very long. And, to add to its woes, it had a succession of regimes that had little accountability to the people they were supposed to serve.
Indeed, the country’s future looked so grim that it was labelled the “test case for development”. “If development can be made to succeed in Bangladesh”, Just Faaland and J. R. Parkinson argued, “there can be little doubt that it can be made to succeed anywhere else”.
Yet within a decade or so, and even while the country remained extremely poor, it began to report remarkable progress on a range of social indicators: fertility, health, nutrition, life expectancy and education. The unexpectedness of this progress in the face of enormous odds was dubbed the Bangladesh paradox. What added to the paradoxical nature of this progress was that it was accompanied by a steady decline in the marked gender inequalities that had long characterised the country. Bangladesh used to have a culture of son preference so extreme that daughters died in the early years of life in much larger numbers than sons – in contrast to most of the world. Today, daughters have gained in value and – as is the case in most other regions – are more likely to survive the crucial early years of life than sons. This progress on gender equality was unexpected not only because of Bangladesh’s extreme form of patriarchy, but because it was (and remains) a largely Islamic society, and Islam is constantly held up in the academic literature as the religion most antithetical to gender equality – as the “other” of modernity.
Challenging gender norms in the context of the Islam of people’s everyday lives
In my recently published book, Renegotiating Patriarchy, I set out to explain how the Bangladesh paradox happened, focusing particularly on the critical part played by women’s agency.
The story told in the book is a reminder that religions are not monolithic constructs. They take root in different contexts and are absorbed into the belief systems that came before them. Islam was first brought to Bangladesh by preachers, not by rulers. It shaped, and was shaped by, the cultural beliefs of a delta region to which different waves of people had migrated from other parts of Asia and in which different belief systems had flourished. These included the “great” traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and, later, Islam but also the “little” traditions of long-standing folk religions that had helped people to cope with the unpredictability that had characterised life in the delta since time immemorial.
The Islam of Bangladesh shaped, and was shaped by, the cultural beliefs of a delta region to which different waves of people had migrated from other parts of Asia.
The Islam of Bangladesh was a product of this history, an amalgam of these past influences. It instilled in its people a belief in the divine while also allowing a place for individual conscience, a degree of pragmatism that helped them to cope with life’s uncertainties. It is this syncretic form of Islam that has allowed women today, in their roles as mothers, wives, sisters and daughters, the ability to renegotiate the patriarchal structures of their society – to expand their “room for manoeuvre” without ever compromising their religious beliefs. They followed shariat (legal Islam), they told me, but they followed marfat (spiritual Islam) too. (This Bengali song, subtitled in English, takes the form of a mock “duel” between a holy man and his disciple, extolling what they value about these different versions of Islam).
My book describes how these women reinterpreted patriarchal norms to persuade those in authority in their families to let them earn an income of their own, to become breadwinners rather than dependents, to voice their concerns rather than suffer in silence. And within this expanded room for manoeuvre, a major driving force behind the Bangladesh paradox was the desire of mothers to give their daughters a better chance in life than the one that society had prescribed for them. Above all, they went to great lengths to educate their daughters because they believed education would allow them to find decent jobs, to have a say in who they married and to enter marriage with a stronger sense of self-worth than their mothers had ever had.
A major driving force behind the Bangladesh paradox was the desire of mothers to give their daughters a better chance in life than the one that society had prescribed for them.
Over the years, there have been systemic efforts by various groups – Islamic parties, migrants returning from the Middle East and aid donors from the Gulf countries – to import the more orthodox Wahabi version of Islam that originated in the Middle East sometime in the 18th century. They seek to suppress all that is Bengali in Bengali Islam – its songs, dances and theatre, its ceremonies for observing births, deaths and marriages, its veneration of spiritual leaders, and the respect it accords to the religious communities that have grown up around their shrines. More recently, they have added women’s football matches, watching television and kite-flying celebrations to their list of “anti-Islamic” activities. Their efforts have born some fruit but so far failed to override the “lived Islam” of ordinary people.
Carving out multiple pathways to personhood
As I carried out the research for this book, I was often reminded of an observation made by Lila Abou-Lughod in an article she wrote very soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan. She pointed out that Afghan women, and indeed Muslim women anywhere, did not necessarily yearn for emancipation, equality and rights of the kind assumed by Western feminists to be the universal language of progress. It was possible that they considered their emancipation to lie in matters they deemed more important: piety, closeness to family, the values of their culture. “They might”, she said, “be called to personhood, so to speak, in a different language”.
Of course, Abou-Lughod’s piece was written in response to the justifications made for the invasion in terms of “liberating” or “saving” Afghan women from Taliban rule. But her argument relates to the point made earlier: the widespread belief in the West that the cultural opposition between progressive Western values and the backwardness of Islam meant that Muslim women needed saving.
What the Bangladesh story told me is that within Islam itself, as within any religion, women do not necessarily value the same things or speak the same language. Many seek to counter injustices in their lives in ways that suggest other pathways to personhood than the simple opposition between “progressive” Western and “regressive” Islamic values would suggest.
What the Bangladesh story told me is that within Islam itself, as within any religion, women do not necessarily value the same things or speak the same language.
The agency these women exercised took different forms, but they did not represent a rejection of their religious beliefs. Some sought the piety and closeness with families of the kind prescribed by religious orthodoxy. Others drew on the multiple strands of Islam present in Bangladesh to subscribe to a more personal form of piety, a more direct, less prescribed, relationship with God, often one that allowed them some of the rights and freedoms that were denied by more orthodox versions.
Contestations over these different meanings of personhood have come dramatically to the forefront since the July Uprising of 2024, when a student-led movement overthrew 15 years of an increasingly autocratic rule. Although the uprising was ostensibly about “non-discrimination”, and women participated in large numbers, it is evident that for those who subscribe to Islamist orthodoxy, this is not a principle that applies to women. The Women’s Affairs Reform Commission that was set up by the current interim government to advise about women’s place in the “new” Bangladesh submitted a report in April this year asking for basic rights for women, including freedom from violence in the public and domestic domain, equal rights of inheritance and greater representation in the political sphere.
Within days, Islamist groups had taken to the streets to denounce the Commission and call for its abolition on the grounds that its demands were anti-Islamic (see the image below, as well as the counter protest that followed). For these Islamist groups, there is only one pathway to personhood for women, the one that conforms to their values. In this belief, ironically, they appear to be the mirror image of the Western feminists that Abu Lughod was writing about.
Naila Kabeer is Professor of Gender and Development at the LSE’s Department of International Development and a Faculty Associate at the International Inequalities Institute. She is on the governing board of the Atlantic Fellowship for Social and Economic Equity and has done extensive advisory work with international agencies (World Bank, ADB, UNDP, UN Women), bilateral agencies (DFID, SIDA, CIDA, IDRC) and NGOs (Oxfam, Action Aid, BRAC, PRADAN and Nijera Kori).
This blog was first published on the LSE Inequalities blog and has also been reposted on LSE’s Activism, Influence and Change blog, which is run by FP2P’s Blogger Emeritus, Duncan Green. You can read more from it and subscribe here.