Women’s struggles for social wellbeing in the patriarchal dried fish value chains of Bangladesh.

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Date
2025-01-03
Authors
Akter, Aklima
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Abstract

The social wellbeing of the women who work in the dried fish value chains of Teknaf, Bangladesh is interlinked with the patriarchal society and the state. On the one hand, women are engaging themselves with the value chains as economic actors and contributing to them. On the other hand, they face various patriarchal constraints. Women work as laborers in the processing sites day and night to support the processing site owners but suffer financial exploitation and unequal treatment, and often sexual harassment in return. They also must tolerate social stigma because of working late at night. Furthermore, processing site owners and male laborers belittle the responsibilities of female laborers in the kholas. Women’s mobility is controlled by patriarchal ideology centered in the family, neighbors, and society. Women support dried fish processing site owners through their home work but without any payment in return. If they are abandoned by their husband, brothers, or sons, their futures become even more uncertain and insecure. The patriarchal orientation of state policy is indicated by women’s exclusion from all fishing related laws and policies.

Nonetheless, women are not passive recipients of these patriarchal constraints, rather they have strategies to negotiate with the patriarchal system for their social wellbeing. Negotiation occurs through their everyday employment and engagements within the value chains. Female laborers between the ages of 35 and 72 have built an unofficial association to argue for financial and other benefits. Often, they accommodate one patriarchal ideology to negotiate with another. Their clothing and where they construct their houses are relevant examples in this regard. Women use symbolic strategies to contest patriarchal constraints within the khola and in society. Moreover, bargaining with the patriarchal system is constantly changing through the everyday engagements of the female laborers within the dried fish value chains in Teknaf, Bangladesh.

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Dried fish, Social wellbeing, Gender, Patriarchal Bargaining, Agency, Value chains, Teknaf, Bangladesh
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