Negotiating social and familial norms: women’s labour market participation in rural Bangladesh and North India

Abstract

In this chapter, Heather Piggott explores how experiences of poverty in rural Bangladesh and North India intersect with experiences of motherhood and family care-giving. The chapter highlights how previous research on women’s labour market participation in the global South has overwhelmingly taken the form of nationally- or regionally- scaled quantitative economic analysis, overlooking families’ lived experiences of poverty and work. Through research with families in rural Bangladesh and North India, the chapter explores how experiences of poverty, inequality and marginality are compounded by neoliberal labour market restructurings and traditional patriarchal gender roles. The chapter suggests that subtle shifts in social attitudes may be allowing some hopeful, affirmative futures for women in and girls in this context, but these attitudinal shifts remain uneven in terms of religion, class and caste norms.