A Silver Lining: Women in Reserved Seats in Local Government in Bangladesh

Abstract

The system of reserved seats with direct elections to local government bodies has been in place for women since 1997. This article investigates how perceptions have changed about the role of women representatives in local government. By exploring the accounts of women's views, experiences and how they negotiate various structural and attitudinal obstacles, and the changes in the wider sociopolitical context, the article shows that women representatives have gained greater voice and social legitimacy in representing specific types of 'women's issues.' These gains were partly a result of the supportive policy directives and mechanisms created by the state. Despite these gains, the centralised and andocentric nature of Bangladeshi government and politics may limit the transformatory potential of these changes.

The Politics of Inclusive Development

“…In Bangladesh, at the lowest tier of local government, research shows that after the direct elections were introduced in 1997 in the reserved seats for women, women members' expectations and how the general public viewed their role underwent a qualitative shift (Nazneen and Tasneem 2010). However, being directly elected by a constituency does not automatically lead to women representatives acting to promote women's interests.…”

“…Countries such as Bangladesh have provisions that stipulate that women should be chairs of at least one third of all project development committees and members of one third of all project implementation committees and distribute 30 per cent of the resources allocated by the centre. Though these provisions have ensured women's inclusion into committees, their capacity to represent gender equity concerns remains debatable and women members have been used by chairs to implement their own projects (Nazneen and Tasneem 2010).…”

“…Grassroots membership organizations, such as Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in India, which aimed at organizing informal women workers, have been successful in creating structures and strategies that allow them to negotiate workers' wages and working conditions at the local level and also in national policy spaces (Kabeer 1994). The domestic women workers' association in Brazil (Sardenberg and Acosta 2014) and the membership-based migrant women workers' association in Bangladesh started off as small associations (Nazneen and Sultan 2014) and later evolved into larger organizations advocating national strategies and policies that would serve the interests of their members.…”

“…Analysis of women's movements in our case-study countries shows that these movements by grassroots, policy advocates, and other organizations use the following common strategies: a) build coalitions within the movement on particular issues; b) form alliances with other civil society organizations (CSOs) and the media; c) target selective parts of the state bureaucracy, including local government, concerned ministries, the national gender machinery; d) cultivate allies among women representatives and also among male politicians; e) use international women's rights discourse/human rights discourse to package their demands; and f) establish and highlight their expertise and experience on the particular gender equity issue around which they are mobilizing (Nazneen and Sultan 2014;Randall 1998). …”

“…This has implications for whether coalitions are seen as being representative of a wider constituency around a particular issue. The Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW) ratification coalition in Bangladesh is a good example of this particular legitimacy problem (Nazneen and Sultan 2014). Discussions in previous sections on Uganda and South Africa show that allies within the state bureaucracy and political parties, particularly men, and the strong links between women's movements and women representatives created scope for the movements to raise their issues in various forums (Goetz 2003a;Mbatha 2003;Hassim 2003;Htun and Weldon 2010).…”