Bangladesh, Aid, Feminism, & Radical Islam

By Amartya Talukdar: Bangladesh is one of the poorest and densely populated Muslim-majority countries in Southeast Asia. And radical feminism is helping fuel the growth of Radical Islam there. Many home grown radical feminists such as Taslima Nasreen talk of Bangladeshi Muslim women’s victimization by religion, especially Islamic laws. But the irony is that they do not talk about real issues that face Bangladeshi women.
One of the largest Industries of Bangladesh is the Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry. RMG involves moving fashion trends from the catwalk to the consumer rapidly and at a low cost in order to prompt increased sales. To compete globally, some of the best-known global garment brands and sports bands get their garments and sports goods manufactured in Bangladesh.
The RMG industry is the backbone of the Bangladesh economy. RMG currently represents 30% of Bangladesh’s industrial GPD (and 80% export earning), of which 85% of the labour is provided by women.
Women work for extremely long hours, in sweat shops, for pittance. They are denied leave or Maternity benefits. Yet for some strange reasons feminist are silent about this exploitation (1) . Many of them actually sing eulogies about the garment industry as liberators of women.
To facilitate exploitation of Bangladeshi labour, capitalism has found a new bed mate in Feminism ⁽²⁾.

Feminism in Bangladesh is promoted through aid since Bangladesh is heavily dependent on external aid for survival. One feminist strategy that evolved in the 1975 World Conference of the International Women’s Year at Mexico City has been the concept of “Women-in-Development.” It was coined in the early 1970s by a Washington-based network of female development professionals.
Women in Development (WID) is associated with the wide range of activities concerning women in the development domain , which donor agencies, governments and NGOs have become involved in since the 1970s.
Women-centric aid policies had become the norm for western aid agencies.  The Women-In-Development (WID) paradigm of the United Nations and western aid organizations are used for promoting feminism in Bangladesh. Aid is mostly disbursed through Non-Government Organizations (NGOs).
Instead of targeting anti-poverty measures at all citizens, these NGOs target women and girls. Instead of providing credit, access to health, marketing facilities, employment, education to all, these NGOs provide them only to women or through women. By asymmetrically increasing the power and resources of rural women, they apparently hope to breakdown social set-up and usher in feminist utopia.
Today NGOs have become more powerful than the Bangladeshi government.
There are several critical factors that allow the NGOs to play such a decisive role in rural life in Bangladesh.

1. The virtual absence of the state in the rural economy. NGOs dominate the rural economy from health to telecommunications to primary education.
2. NGOs provide the bulk of institutional credit in rural areas In Bangladesh.
3. The NGOs are a major source of employment in a country with limited job opportunities for young population.
4. NGOs use their borrowers as vote banks, urging them to cast votes for political candidates who represent an NGO-friendly platform.

NGOs have ushered in a politics of “grassroots” mobilization of the poor, especially women. Such “grassroots” mobilization is frequently simply what Americans call astroturfing: NGOs organise rallies, hold camps about “women’s rights,” and openly ask then to defy family and husbands. They also fund feminist studies on so called domestic “violence against women” etc. while totally ignoring violence against men, responsibilities that come with rights, and so on.
Even though Bangladeshis generally practice a mild form of Islam, the growth of Feminism has prompted some Men to seek refuge under banner of Islamic Fundamentalism.
The Gulf provides employment to thousands of youth from Bangladesh. Many of them come home tutored in radical versions of Islam. Feminism and Radical Islam have been clashing more frequently in recent times (3). The harm young men experience due to Feminist discrimination against them and teaching hatred for them fuels much of the attraction to radical Islamic doctrines.
However a Liberal and secular Men’s Rights movement has also taken wings to counter Feminism in Bangladesh. Thus there is an urgent need to review the aid schemes of western nations that are against interest of Men, and to work with the growing Men’s Rights Movement there.

(1) https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/1653595
(2) http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/14/feminism-capitalist-handmaiden-neoliberal
(3)http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/05/201356134629980318.html

About Amartya Talukdar

Amartya is a dedicated humanist living in Kolkata in India. He attended Banaras Hindu University. He is a relentless campaigner for Indian and family values.

Source