Welfare, Work, and Women’s Empowerment: Evidence from Bangladesh’s Food for Work Program

Abstract

Women’s empowerment has become a major concern of both developed and developing countries across the world. Women are often largely marginalized from economic, political, and familial spheres because they tend to have limited access to economic resources, health care, and education and suffer disproportionately from the effects of poverty, discriminatory laws, practices, attitudes and gender stereotypes, and so forth. This study assesses the level of women’s empowerment by scrutinizing economic, political, and interpersonal and familial factors in rural Bangladesh. The study employed qualitative interviews and focus group discussions to determine the contribution of a food for work program that was not designed to empower women, to women’s perception of empowerment. The study interviewed 305 respondents in two districts and ten subdistricts using a purposive sampling procedure. The study showed some evidence of enhanced economic empowerment, strong evidence of increased local political empowerment, and evidence of interpersonal empowerment among women participating in the program.