Purdah and Changing Patterns of Social Control among Rural Women in Bangladesh

Abstract

Using data gathered in 1966 and between 1975 and 1982 this paper shows how changes in womens productive activities and in the demand for female wage labor have affected the accoutrements and expression of purdah among Bangladeshi villagers. Purdah is defined as the specific pattern of exchange between the sexes. Purdah incorporating as it does patterns of social control in combination with religous justification changes in saliency as social conditions change. 1 reason is that the ability of a society to institutionalize and perpetuate particular forms of social behavior depends on the continuation and stability of particular patterns of social organization. Traditional patterns of social control encompassed by the purdah system enhanced the status of the families of women who observed purdah as well as providing the basis for the personal status of individual women. The traditional observance of purdah was generated and maintained by a distinctive sexual division of labor and the status and condition of rural families contributed to the form of purdah observed in earlier periods of Bangladesh. An illustration of the changing nature of the purdah system was the advent and popularization of the burkha in perindependent Bangladesh. This garment which conceals a woman from head to toe actually increases the mobility of Muslim women thereby enhancing their social participation and visibility this paper argues with mixed results. In the more recent period as the ability of 1 person to support a family has decreased and the household itself is threatened women and children are increasingly forced to provide for their own subsistence. Having few skills except those related to agriculture they seek employment close to their homes in areas related to agriculture. While it is apparent that old forms of repression and control have passed away what has replaced them has had mixed effects on women. Greater mobility and freedom of movement have been gained because of deteriorating socioeconomic conditions; along with this great mobility however has come even greater personal responsibility for ones subsistence.

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