Gender and Ethnic Discrimination

Socioeconomic inequality among men and women is a major hindrance in ensuring equal advancement for all human being to live a dignified life. Minority status of women further exacerbates inequalities faced by women belonging to small ethnic groups. The chapter explores gender inequality across three small ethnic minorities' groups in Bangladesh. Applying Nussbaum's capability approach to analyze the situation of women with different social and ethnic identities, this chapter unpacks the three-fold barriers experienced by women belonging to minorities groups – first, as minority group, second as women and third as minority women. Lack of awareness, perceiving their “present state” as destiny, social and local norms and patriarchal way of thinking force these women to live with identity of secondary citizens.

Communication Process in Family Reinforcing the Gender Differences in Bangladesh

Family is an important institution to build a person's personality, morality, value and attitude. When this institution communicates properly, it shows the impact e.g. a boy or a girl becomes social human being. Unfortunately in our family gender biasness is reinforced continuously by starting to behave differently with boys and girls from the childhood. Parents communicate with them in a different way which constructs the traits of “masculinity” and “femininity”. Girls are compelled to learn the feminine role with politeness, submissiveness and their mobility is restricted in public world. It is a family which trains a girl to be a good mother, wife, sister or daughter, on the other hand a boy learns to be social, intellectual, able to run the world and strong. This different formation of role and behavior results in the ongoing discrimination everywhere in the society. This reinforcement is sort of relief from social stigmatization but has overall negative impact on life and through this family can be counted as the main birthplace of discrimination against women. Girls and boys must be raised neutrally to eradicate the gender differences and ensure the equality.

Women in Bangladesh Local Government

The Governments of Bangladesh have announced various policies and programs to empower women. The Local Government (Union Parishad) Second Amendment Act 1997 of Bangladesh is such an initiative which creates the provision of one third reserve seats for women in the local government bodies to be elected directly by the voters. This law creates new opportunities and enable women to step-in into the elective positions of grass-roots level local government and to raise their voices and influence the decisions taken in the Union Parishad. The study finds that the elected women members seriously lack material, human, and social resources required to be able or empowered enough to influence decisions at the Union Parishad.

The Role of Women Directors for Malaysian Firms' Performance

This research aims to investigate the role of Women on Board Director on firm performance in Malaysia. We use data for all listed companies in Bursa Malaysia during the period of 2009 – 2013, and find that the proportion of women in top management jobs tends to have positive effects on firm performance, even after controlling for numerous characteristics of the firm and direction of causality. The results show that the positive effects of women in top management depend on the qualifications of female top managers. The results imply the necessity of Women in firm as board directors, because it might induce firm performance.

Social Media and Conformist Voluntarism in the Neoliberal Era

In this essay, the author proposes a cultural geographic understanding of the space of social media and explore placemaking processes through which microcelebrities got engaged in neoliberal conformist voluntarism. Inspired by a middle class urban civic consciousness, microcelebrities produced and circulated a homogenous cultural and ideological composition of women garment workers, disconnected from their material lives and collective histories. The author juxtaposes two cases of virtual activism around the Rana plaza collapse and the Shahbag protest order to examine how gender, class, neoliberalism, and nationalism determine the politics of exclusion and inclusion in the space of social media. She also considers some oppositional practices that challenge the microphysics of power and politics of representation in these spaces.

Women, Migration, Ready Made Garment Factories in Dhaka

The Chapter addresses the plausibility and transformatory potential of internally migrated women working in the readymade garment factories in Dhaka to work as a critical mass to challenge the existing class and culture in urban Dhaka. Based on a feminist research methodology and reviewing of relevant scholarly research, the chapter breaks down itself into two main parts. The former focuses on the literature on migration, paid work and empowerment and the latter part deals with the evidences of credibility and potentiality of working women to make a rupture into the existing class system and cultural set up of urban Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The chapter ends with a realistic standpoint that calls for further investigation and sanction into this area of immense and strong possibility.

Beauty, Choice, and Empowerment

This study tries to explore the interrelated dynamics among cosmetic surgery, choice and empowerment. While poverty, poor health accessibility and gender inequality are common problems in Bangladesh, a growing number of cosmetic clinics are being established and a number of women are increasingly taking up cosmetic surgeries. This study seeks to explore why women choose cosmetic surgeries for beautification, how they experience it and whether cosmetic surgery leads women to be empowered or not. Using qualitative research methods, this study used in-depth semi structured interview, observation and case study method to collect the data from the different cosmetic surgery patients, coming from both urban and rural areas of Bangladesh. The data was further analyzed by coding informants' responses into themes based on the research objectives and the theory, named ‘empowerment'. The study shows that even if the women choose surgery, it does not necessarily enhance their empowerment. That is the surgery that brings changes in physical appearance and might make them attractive, but it contributes little socially in terms of enabling them to make own decision in the contest of family and in community. Rather these women act as prescribed by patriarchal norms and gendered rules. Analyzing the data from theoretical point of view, this study found that the women, irrespective of regional boundaries, can rarely fulfill the condition of empowerment in relation to choice and IAP. The study concludes with some questions and queries that need more research to be answered.

Urban Nepali Women and Experiences of Love, Intimate Relations, and Media

Focusing on the influence of media, this chapter explores a variety of gender practices in the era of globalisation. This chapter explores how urban Nepali women constantly negotiate between global flows and local context and the effects of this negotiation on their gender roles, and on their familial and intimate relationships. The chapter analyses the ways media, especially Indian visual media, which is a common source of discussion among urban women, is affecting them and their daily lives. Examining the importance of visual media, films and television in directing new identities and implications of gender roles and intimate relationships, this chapter explores ways urban women of Nepal are negotiating their gender relations and intimate lives in relation to the binary of ‘cultural practices' and ‘modernity' through watching Indian visual media.

The Exploitation of Women Workers

The recent series of man-made accidents in Bangladeshi garment industries are highly disturbing to the collective conscience of human beings. These accidents point not only to the poor construction of the factory buildings but also to the invisible tie between the insatiable need for cheap clothing on the part of western consumers and the unlimited greed of the local industry owners. Because most of the workers are economically desperate women and the industries are operated by a capitalist system that denies the rights of women, a systemic exploitation results. Drawing upon the recent tragic events of the deadliest industry disasters in Bangladesh, this paper examines how the industry owners perceive, and practice, ‘human rights'? It also investigates whether neo-colonial modernity is merely exploiting women while pretending to improve their economic conditions, and finally, to what extent female industry workers can overturn the vicious circle of exploitation to establish their rights.

Overcoming Intersectional Barriers

This chapter discusses the complexity and challenges of exploring the impact of gender on women's ability to realise their potential in Nepal. It demonstrates the limitations of using binary divisions to exploring ‘gender' as a key factor that impacts upon women's lives. By analysing interviews with ‘inspirational' women in Nepal conducted between 2009 and 2012 the chapter highlights the importance of exploring intersectional factors that also influenced women's life experiences. Based on interviews with 34 ‘inspirational' women in Nepal the chapter explores how the term ‘inspirational' is defines and discusses the range of work being done by so many women in Nepal that is truly inspiring. Through a discourse analysis of their stories of childhood and education we can see what key factors have played a role in enabling these women to realise their potential and to overcome intersectional barriers to work in a range of diverse positions, from the first female District Development Officer to the first women to gain her doctorate from overseas, to women who have set up NGOS working towards a more equitable and just society to others who have set up their own businesses or becoming leading academics. The conclusion draws together some key recommendations for future research and policy makers as well as those seeking to promote more equitable sustainable development that truly includes women in the process as autonomous, heterogeneous actors in the development process