Women of Bangladesh primarily exist in global literature as crucial labourers in the âsweatshop economyâ or the âMuslim womenâ who need rescue. However, recent public profiles of Bangladeshi women in transnational spaces such as Nadia Hussain who won the Great British Bake Off in 2015 and Kishwar Chowdhury who became the second runner up in MasterChef Australia in 2021 compel us to question whether womanhood is just a space of liminality and subordination for all Bangladeshi women and to reconstruct Bangladeshi womenâs positions in relation to class, culture and religion as spaces of negotiation, resistance and politics. Addressing the need for celebrating Bangladeshi womanhood beyond dichotomies of freedom and unfreedom, this book is an exploration of how the identity of new womenness is constructed and performed in urban Bangladesh, through classed gender practices of respectable femininity. Bangladesh is going through a significant transition due to globalization and neoliberalization of its economy and has a distinctive affluent middle class who engages in the service sector of the economy, with exposure to global education, professions and media. Gender roles within this class are also changing as more women enter public arenas through education and paid employment, affecting womenâs status, opportunities and the domestic division of labour. The new women participants of this research are part of this affluent middle class of Bangladesh.
Despite enjoying certain privileges of class and mobility in public spaces the women of this research also identify as Muslim and women of a âthird world countryâ. However, the new woman voices of this research reject the global narrative that Muslim women need to âescape from Islamâ to achieve true âfreedomâ, which simultaneously identify Islam as a religion of âunfreedomâ for women as a contrast to the secularism of the West which allow women self-expression often through expression of sexuality. Siddiqi (2014) explains this using the American Apparel advertisement in Elle magazine where an American Bangladeshi model appeared topless featuring the word âmade in Bangladeshâ. The brown Muslim body of the immigrant Bangladeshi model in the advertisement is explicitly used by American Apparel to appeal to Northern/Western customers who are aware of the âsweatshop conditionâ in third world countries including the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2012. The neoliberal tropes of capitalism in the West saw the bare-chested Bangladeshi model in Elle magazine as a project of liberating brown Muslim women of Bangladesh by giving them the ârightâ or âempower-mentâ to bare body which presumably the women who are still in Bangladesh do not have (Siddiqi, 2014: 298). The new women of this research challenge this ârescueâ narrative and demonstrate freedom, empowerment and liberation within their cultural environment in Bangladesh. New womanâs Muslimness is only discussed in relation to their sartorial choices while a complex set of behavioural rules applies to all women in Bangladesh and South Asia at large which are an outcome of sociocultural and class requirements which is discussed via the concept of respectable femininity in this research. In so doing, this book reinstates that categories around difference such as gender, ethnicity (culture), class and religion are modes of power which create boundaries and hierarchies in social life that underline capitalist social relations and inform peopleâs sense of belonging.
The Affluent Middle Class of Bangladesh
The middle class in Bangladesh is not a monolithic or homogeneous group. Although participants of this research identify themselves as middle-class women and their understanding of respectability is in line with middle-class notions of propriety, I read them as a specific constellation, a subset of the middle class. And particularly due to their economic prosperity derived from neoliberal jobs and dual-earner families, I consider them as part of an affluent middle-class community of Bangladesh (Hussein, 2017).
The independence of Bangladesh reorganized its classes, whereby a salaried middle class took centre stage in the capital city, Dhaka, in the mission to rebuild the nation, sometimes via their commitment to development and progress of the country and at other times as a small group of intellectuals who travelled abroad and engaged in some kind of activism for their country (Siddiqui, 1990). Karim (2012) and Sabur (2010) discuss the emergence of a relatively affluent middle class in Dhaka in early 2000s. Broadly the yearly income bracket of an affluent middle-class household is between ÂŁ6,600 and ÂŁ9,900 plus (Rashid, 2012). But Sabur (2010) identifies a certain âlifestyleâ and the âtransaction of various capitalsâ, such as social networks, from one generation to another as the defining elements of the affluent middle class in the capital city of Dhaka.
The affluent middle class consists of a group of professionals (both husband and wife in a nuclear household) with four characteristics. First, education is a major status symbol of this class which includes at least university education and recently in terms of primary and secondary education a preference of expensive English-medium schools is also becoming prominent (ibid.: 95). Second, occupation is one of the defining characteristics of this affluent middle class where dual income, inherited property and other forms of fixed or liquid assets make the income of the families to ÂŁ6,192 to ÂŁ14,448 plus which are then transmitted across generations and provide agents with the leverage to attain essential cultural and social capital and to sustain a particular lifestyle (ibid.: 97). Third comes domesticity and consumption patterns, whereby women who are exposed to global lifestyle cultures through work or media introduce new consumption habits to the family, such as eating out, socializing in cafes, and regular visits to beauty salons and gymnasiums. Affluent middle-class womenâs values and tastes not only shape the middle-class lifestyle but also establish their boundaries from other classes and establish their âhabitusâ (Bourdieu, 1992), a âplace where tastes of a class are formed, nurtured and aimed towards a particular lifestyleâ (ibid.: 101). Finally, the middle-class community invests money, effort and energy to sustain social relationships with friends, family, colleagues, voluntary political or social groups they are involved with. Socializing takes place over occasional visits, and attending social events, such as birthdays, marriages, funerals and parties (Sabur, 2010: 102â105). I identify the new women of Bangladesh as part of this affluent middle class and find it useful to analyse new womenâs classed identity of respectability in Bourdieusian terms, conceived in terms of possession of capitals, devel...
