Nineteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

This research aims to understand how middle-class and upper-middle-class Muslim women in Dhaka, Bangladesh experience empowerment and sexual agency within marriage. Like other South Asian countries, the discourse of sexuality in Bangladesh is often understood as a realm of intimate contact (Connell, 2002) in which gendered power dynamics function most explicitly (Correa & Parker, 2008). Socio-culturally induced silence regarding sexualities and indeed intimate partner violence fundamentally impacts women’s choices and rights within marriage in Bangladesh (Hossen, 2014). This situation does not get better with the economic engagement of women in the public domain, as in Bangladesh, men dominate, oppress and exploit women through private and public patriarchy (Chowdhury, 2010). Though women’s increased participation in labour force resulted in shifts in the power dynamics within families (Hussein, 2017), women were barely given the access to the entire control of their own income. Men’s authority and control over their wife’s income was rather justified as a natural phenomenon considering women as their private properties (Chowdhury, 2010). Such economic gains give women a significant right in their familial negotiations but they have failed to eliminate conventional expectations of middle-class ‘respectable femininity’ (Hussein, 2017). Considering such trajectories of empowerment among urban, middle-class women in Bangladesh, their contribution to social transformation, the diversities of gender dynamics and sexual agency within marital relationships are yet under-researched (Lewis, 2011). This research, therefore, navigates women’s economic empowerment and sexual agency within middle-class Muslim marriage and whether it has consequences of intimate partner violence or any other.