Introduction: contentious women's empowerment in South Asia

Abstract

Questions of women's power remain a matter of heated debate globally, but take on a heightened intensity in a South Asia featuring rapid economic growth and structural transformation in recent decades. This Special Issue aims to improve understanding of how the women of South Asia are gaining and exercising power and of the obstacles and backlash they face, moving beyond discussion of women's empowerment as a matter of control over domestic economic resources or labour market participation. Articles from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan examine the struggles of garments workers in global value chains, middle class professionals, subsistence farmers and wage labourers, tracing the actors, institutions, and movements that build or block women's pathways to power. Collectively, the articles argue for paid work to be treated as a critical arena for struggles over women's power, not an end in itself. They draw attention to the roles of states and patriarchal forces in building or blocking pathways to power, and to the resilient nature of gendered norms that serve patriarchy. And they highlight the need for research into women's empowerment to focus on key episodes of political contention, as critical junctures for the progressor retreatof women's empowerment.

“A Woman Is a Puppet.” Women’s Disempowerment and Prenatal Anxiety in Pakistan: A Qualitative Study of Sources, Mitigators, and Coping Strategies for Anxiety in Pregnancy

“…This study suggests that pregnancy-related empowerment can be useful for contextualizing the experience of prenatal maternal anxiety for women in South Asia, and a further examination of the intersections between empowerment and perinatal mental illness is warranted. This is of particular relevance in settings like South Asia where the high burden of CMDs in pregnancy exists within a context of rapid changes in the social and economic environment, including the available employment opportunities, level of education, and traditional gender roles for women [70].…”

Transformative Grassroots Leadership: Understanding the Role of Rojiroti’s Women Leaders in Supporting Social Change

“…Scholars have argued that research into women's empowerment needs to focus on political contention and engage with power relations that lead to inequality. In line with this, current understandings of empowerment specify the development of consciousness, and direct exercise of power, to achieve change (Nazneen, Hossain, & Chopra, 2019). This brings us back to leadership since it is often essential for raising consciousness and disrupting existing unequal power structures.…”

‘A mobile phone is like a friendship. It depends from person to person how it is used': mobile phone relationships among low-income women in urban Bangladesh

“…These interactions involve the navigation of the boundaries of their mobility and the negotiation of gender norms in order to expand their available opportunities and make independent, strategic choices. Acknowledging that this process is an everyday occurrence among marginalised and disempowered groups, such as low-income women, provides an insight into the social dimensions of women's empowerment that are less easily measured by development matrices (Nazneen, Hossain, and Chopra 2019).…”

“…In Bangladesh, this apparent link is exemplified in the Grameen Bank's microcredit and village phone scheme (Aminuzzaman, Baldersheim, and Jamil 2003). However, the idea of a natural progression from Bangladeshi women's financial inclusion and contributions towards national economic growth, to empowerment and reducing gender inequality, is questioned by many (Hunt and Kasynathan 2001;Kabeer, Mahmud, and Tasneem, 2018;Nazneen, Hossain, and Chopra 2019).…”