Poverty, Gender, and Work in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is experiencing rapid socioeconomic change marked by increasing rates of landlessness and impoverishment. The consequences of this change vary according to the socio economic class of the households and the gender of household members. The paper argues that the production and kinship systems in rural Bangladesh should be analysed in terms of class and gender. Women from the poorest class face special, often devastating risks associated with one particular manifestation of the traditional production system, the highly segregated labour and product markets. Moreover, an increasing number pf women need access to the labour and product markets which to date, have been largely segregated for males: