CLASS, PATRIARCHY, AND WOMENS WORK IN BANGLADESH

Women's roles in rural Bangladesh and in the economies of developing countries in general have been poorly documented and researched. This article provides an analysis of women's work using a unique set of data, including detailed information on time allocation, collected in a village in Bangladesh. Women's work is analyzed in the context of the powerful system of male dominance (patriarchy) that operates in the society. Patriarchy is grounded in control of material resources and supported by elements of the kinship, political, and religious systems. Important consequences of the patriarchal system are that women are placed at risk of abrupt declines in economic status; under the pressure of increasing poverty the proportion of women who must fend for themselves is increasing; and women face a labor market that is highly restricted both spatially and functionally, resulting in relatively low wages and high rates of unemployment. The paper documents the division of labor by sex, seasonal variations in labor utilization, and the structure of the female labor market. Implications for fertility behavior, population policy, and employment policy are considered.-Authors