South Asia: Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Islands of the Indian Ocean - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 256

What is life like for millions of Bangladeshi women?
Here are some facts from a Bangladeshi government
study in 2009:

The basic spatial unit is the bari, two to six
houses built around a square or rectangular court-
yard. Within the bari are patrilinearly-related, nu-
clear families. Clustered bari form a neighborhood,
and several of these make up a village.
T Tradition holds that women' is work is confined
within or close to the bari. However, various factors
such as religion and economic status influence the
spatial extent of activity space . Also, the status and
position of women change at different times in their
life cycle.
Rich women, young wives, and spouses of
Islamic religious leaders have the smallest spaces
and rarely venture from the home or bari . Other
women are confined by more extensive neighbor-
hood boundaries. Elderly , Hindu, and poor women
have an even greater range of excursion; they can
go farther away from the bari . Males and tribal
women, with freedom of movement, have the
largest activity spaces. Of course, this scheme is a
model, and there is much variation in reality .
Patterns of women' s activities and associated
spatial realms are in flux. Certainly programs in-
tended to empower women have encouraged and
facilitated the expansion of female activity spaces
(Figure 9-7). However, poverty is the basic cause of
working outside the home. While paid labor within
other households remains the major employer of
women, increasing numbers are seeking wage em-
ployment beyond bari and village boundaries.
As landlessness and destitution increase, tradi-
tional familial support structures fail and the rates
of divorce, abandonment, and wife-beating rise.
Consequently , more women are working alongside
men in the fields, in road and building construc-
tion, in brick-making, and numerous manufactur-
ing enterprises. Usually , increased activity space
outside the home is accompanied by improvement
in living standards, but as Dr. Paul observes, “Un-
fortunately , this relationship has not emerged in
Bangladesh.”

The incidence of low birth weight is significantly
higher for girls. Nearly 40 percent of girls in the
countryside are born underweight. This figure is
34 percent for boys. Figures are lower in cities.
Up to 40 percent of females are married before the
age of 15 and 70 percent are wed prior to age 17.
However, child marriage rates are going down.
Of women between the ages of 45 and 49 today ,
57 percent were married before they were 15. Of
those between the ages of 15 and 19 today , only
17 percent were married before the age of 15.

In 2003, 58 percent of women had no schooling
(48 percent of men). By 2006, the figures were
51 and 37 percent, respectively . Rural-urban
differences are apparent. Forty percent of urban
women versus 54 percent of rural women have no
education, while only 25 percent of urban men and
41 percent of rural men are without any schooling.
When it comes to decision making, some 48 percent
of men decide on food expenditure and what is to be
cooked, and do the food procurement. As to whether
a woman can go to a clinic for health reasons, only 9
percent of women can decide on their own.
Most women are not permitted to go out of their
village or community by themselves. For 20-24, year
olds, only 32 percent can go outside the village and
only 27 percent can go to a clinic on their own. For
women ages 30-34, both these trips are denied to
more than half without a male or much older
female escort.
More than 50 percent of rural men believe that it
is acceptable to beat their wife if she goes out by
herself without his consent (39 percent urban). A
quarter of men believe that they can beat her if she
argues with him.

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Changing Female Activity Space

Geographer Bimal Kanti Paul (1992) studied mobility
and employment opportunities for rural women in
Bangladesh and found that as poverty increased, more
women were forced to seek work outside the home.
This trend jeopardized traditional spatial contexts
defined by village structure, purdah , and patriarchy .

Recent governments, headed by women (refer to
Chapter 3), have taken great strides in improving
women' s lives through education and employment.
Widespread media propaganda promotes the necessity of
empowering women to fully participate in the country' s
development. Employment in labor-intensive industries