Abstract
This article explores mechanisms for making poor rural women’s work visible by drawing on Amartya Sen’s intra-family “cooperative conflict” theory to explain the workings of two Bangladesh non-governmental organization’s income-generating programs (rearing poultry and rearing silkworms). On the assumption that cooperation surpasses conflict in the intra-family relations when women’s work is visible, the article identifies factors that influence intra-family conflict and cooperation. At entry, cooperation in a family depends on how successfully the family can make women’s income-generating activities compatible with their existing household responsibilities and with continuation of the male breadwinner’s income source. In women’s continuing work, the level of cooperation depends greatly on the amount and frequency of women’s income and the family’s level of indebtedness. Families with a male breadwinner having a regular income source tended to offer a more cooperative environment to women’s work than those with a breadwinner involved in casual labor. Women’s work as a second regular income source can make their work more visible and contribute to their families’ upward mobility.
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Notes
On the basis of interviews with landless laborers in Dhunot Thana, it is assumed that an agricultural laborer holds a job for 200 days a year at the daily wage rate of Tk. 50. Actual wages ranged from Tk. 30 to 80, depending on the season. The currency rate for one US dollar was Tk. 58.8 in 2003 (Economist Intelligence Unit 2004).
Since 2000, the chawki rearing system has been supported financially by the World Bank under its Silk Development Project.
There are 64 districts in Bangladesh; thana is an administrative unit under district. Based on the same fieldwork, Makita (2007) discussed other aspects of rural livelihoods. This article shares some original data from the fieldwork.
One of them had some small parcels of farmland before the participation in the program. The other improved its living standard after the participation because two family members gained stable employment in garment factories in Dhaka.
For instance, according to a survey conducted in a nationwide survey of 120 villages in 1994, the average size of cultivable land owned by members of three NGOs (RDRS, BRAC and ASA) were 47 decimals, 41 decimals, and 50 decimals respectively (Zeller et al. 2001). One acre is equal to 100 decimals.
For instance, three poultry rearers in P Gram were family relatives, living close to each other. Although the husbands of the three rearers were reluctant to support their poultry rearing, the women started the poultry program for their respective families and somehow continued poultry rearing in cooperation with each other.
For more on cross-financing, see Chaudhury and Matin (2002, pp. 46–55).
Rickshaw pullers who rent or lease equipment are different from owner–drivers. Anyone can be a rickshaw puller by dint of rental arrangements, but the income after the deduction of the cost of the rental tends to be very small. This business is generally chosen by a landless family head as a supplementary income source during the agricultural slack seasons or by secondary earning members of a poor family.
Since the fishery group of S Gram contracted an official lease of land with the local government in 2001, the payment of the rental has become a new financial burden to the fishery group members.
The successful case of Shirin’s family also suggests how difficult it is for female-headed families to get out of poverty.
Abbreviations
- IG:
-
Income generating
- IIRD:
-
Institute of Integrated Rural Development
- NGO:
-
Non-governmental organization
- Tk:
-
Taka (unit of currency Bangladesh)
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Aminul Faraizi, Jevon Harding, two anonymous reviewers, and Harvey James for helpful comments on earlier drafts; and the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies at the University of Wollongong for a postdoctoral fellowship which enabled me to write this article. The original fieldwork for this article was financially supported by the Australian National University, for which I am grateful to the staff of ANU. I also appreciate University Press Limited (Dhaka, Bangladesh) for permitting me to use some data from my book for this analysis from a new perspective.
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Makita, R. The visibility of women’s work for poverty reduction: implications from non-crop agricultural income-generating programs in Bangladesh. Agric Hum Values 26, 379–390 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-008-9167-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-008-9167-4