Exploring Theories of Patriarchy: A Perspective from Contemporary Bangladesh

Feldman, Shelley

doi:10.1086/495649

Cited by 87 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…These two sectors, one with an explicitly economic and the other a social mission, have both been facilitated by global restructuring. Together they have revolutionized women's participation in the labor force and women's emergence into public spaces as economic agents (Feldman 2001). At the same time, the NGO boom has benefited the middle class by facilitating the creation of a local cadre of development professionals and staff in the service of 'uplifting' and 'empowering' the poor.…”

Section: Reading and Watching The 'New Woman'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lamia Karim has persuasively argued that in contemporary Bangladesh the urban-based elite women's movement (the patrons, or more appropriately 'matrons') is worlds apart from their rural counterparts who lack both access and resources and are caught in the competitive vying for clients among multiple constituencies such as the state, NGOs (whether feminist or not) and the rural elites. NGOs, argue Siddiqi (2006) and Feldman (2001), have taken on the role of the moral regulator and patron along with and at times in place of older forms of power structures like elite constellations of men.…”

Section: Feminism Community and Solidaritymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Feminism and its ‘other’: representing the ‘new woman’ of Bangladesh

Chowdhury

2010

Gender, Place & Culture

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This essay examines women's oppression and organizing against gender violence in contemporary Bangladesh through the lens of television. I argue that the telefilm Ayna (The Mirror, 2006), written and directed by popular film actor and women's rights activist Kabari Sarwar, offers a window into the changing social and economic landscape of contemporary Bangladesh and the complex negotiations of power and inequality across gender, class and community. Furthermore, it offers an opportunity to unpack the social messages underlying development and modernization initiatives, the new kinds of alliances as well as dependencies engendered by them, and their multiple and uneven consequences. An investigation of the representations of competing and contradictory notions of women's subjectivity and agency in this telefilm allows us to understand how these intersect with shifting notions of local/global patriarchies, feminist solidarity and women's empowerment in Bangladesh today. Further, this essay illuminates the disjunctures between representations of the 'new woman' circulated through development and certain feminist advocacy narratives with women's lived realities of oppression, and survival.

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Section: Reading and Watching The 'New Woman'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Feminism Community and Solidaritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Feminism and its ‘other’: representing the ‘new woman’ of Bangladesh

Chowdhury

2010

Gender, Place & Culture

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“…Gender, Technology and Development, 17, 1 (2013): 1-29 on Walby (1990), Feldman (2001) and Hunnicutt (2009) and understand patriarchy as a set of social arrangements that privilege men, in which men as a group dominate women as a group, structurally and ideologically. However, these arrangements manifest themselves in various ways across space, and over time patriarchal structures and practices undergo transformations as broader economic and political processes unfold.…”

Section: Patriarchy and Its Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorizing Patriarchy: Development Paradoxes and the Geography of Gender in South Asia

Hapke

2013

Gender, Technology and Development

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The status of women in the Indian state of Kerala has long been portrayed as ideal in an otherwise highly patriarchal region of the world. And yet, as feminist scholars and activists in Kerala have long observed, reality fails to live up to popular imagination. Although the state boasts high female literacy, life expectancy, and a favorable sex ratio, female labor force participation rates in Kerala are among the lowest in India, and the mental health status of women in the state appears to be poor. Most troubling is the fact that violence against women in Kerala ranks among the highest of all India's states. Thus, despite significant gains in economic development over the past several decades, the evidence strongly suggests that the status of women in Kerala has declined since the mid-twentieth century. The question, then, is how are we to make sense of these contradictory trends? What theoretical tools are required, and what factors explain the apparent persistence of patriarchal institutions? Finally, how might a deeper understanding of these factors inform our analyses of gender more broadly in the region? Using the paradox of development that the Kerala example presents, the objective of this article is to suggest a theoretical direction for broadly analyzing contemporary gender issues in the geographical studies of South Asia. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding the intersections between economy and culture at multiple geographic scales, and the way particular gender ideologies emerge in the changing social, economic, political, and legal contexts.

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“…I must point out here, however, that the kinds of neo-colonialist narratives being reproduced in the Canadian case are typical of the vast majority of successful asylum cases, not merely those on the basis of sexual orientation. 10 While the veil can be a highly contested symbol and thus represent 'a critical stage for exploring different interpretations of patriarchy' (Feldman 2001(Feldman : 1111, this is clearly not the case with respect to Wolfe's invocation of the veil. In the latter context, Wolfe's new title has the effect of implying a movement from 'oppression' in Iran to 'freedom' in the West, a progression which implicitly links 'coming out' as lesbian for the purposes of asylum with being 'unveiled', and hence 'liberated' from an oppressive patriarchy.…”

Section: Rachel Lewis Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies Programmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cultural Politics of Lesbian Asylum

Lewis

2010

International Feminist Journal of Politics

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Although asylum for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals has been on the international human rights agenda since the early to mid 1990s, lesbian asylum cases do not tend to figure centrally in analyses of the relationship between refugee law and international human rights law. While a number of regional and comparative studies of lesbian asylum exist by legal activists and scholars, a discussion of the politics of lesbian asylum claims has so far remained absent from both feminist and queer studies. In this contribution, I explore how the subject of lesbian asylum is treated within the context of film and visual media. Focusing particular attention on Angelina Maccarone's 2005 film Unveiled about an Iranian lesbian asylum-seeker, I consider the ways in which film and media might transform how we conceive of and imagine lesbian rights. As I will suggest, Unveiled offers important insights into the kinds of representational challenges that are specific to lesbian asylum claims. In this way, I argue, the film constitutes a much-needed intervention into current advocacy on behalf of the issue of lesbian asylum.---

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Exploring Theories of Patriarchy: A Perspective from Contemporary Bangladesh

Cited by 87 publications

References 17 publications

Feminism and its ‘other’: representing the ‘new woman’ of Bangladesh

Feminism and its ‘other’: representing the ‘new woman’ of Bangladesh

Theorizing Patriarchy: Development Paradoxes and the Geography of Gender in South Asia

The Cultural Politics of Lesbian Asylum

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