Community health workers as agents of change: Negotiating pathways of empowerment

In Bangladesh, health and family planning programs were the ﬁrst major employers of rural women in outside paid work. Thus, women community health workers became the pioneers in bringing rural women into outside formal employment in a social/economic context that not only discouraged women’s partici...

Description complète

Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux:	Mahmud, Simeen, Sultan, Maheen
Format:	Working Paper
Langue:	en_US
Publié:	BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) 2022
Sujets:	Bangladesh Community health workers Social norms Rural women Women's participation
Accès en ligne:	http://hdl.handle.net/10361/15885

id	10361-15885
record_format	dspace
spelling	10361-158852022-01-12T21:01:39Z Community health workers as agents of change: Negotiating pathways of empowerment Mahmud, Simeen Sultan, Maheen Bangladesh Community health workers Social norms Rural women Women's participation In Bangladesh, health and family planning programs were the ﬁrst major employers of rural women in outside paid work. Thus, women community health workers became the pioneers in bringing rural women into outside formal employment in a social/economic context that not only discouraged women’s participation in paid outside work but also actively restricted their mobility in the public domain. Although for women today, working as community health workers is no longer a departure from the norm, this was not always the case. This paper looks at contemporary women health workers in Bangladesh to explore how they have re-negotiated purdah and social norms to emerge as valued members of their families and respected members of their communities. While the work of a health worker was itself an extension of women’s traditional care roles and was conceived precisely because norms around women’s visibility and seclusion were so strong at the time that women were difficult to reach with male health workers, this job has been able to negotiate norms to make women’s breadwinner roles and mobility in the public sphere more socially acceptable. It is noteworthy that in this process of change and continuity, women’s trade-oﬀs have been more diﬃcult within the sphere of family and their individual lives, and relatively easier in the sphere of community life. There was some evidence that the speciﬁc organizational context in which women worked had bearing upon these changes. 2022-01-12T08:41:47Z 2022-01-12T08:41:47Z 2016 2016-09 Working Paper http://hdl.handle.net/10361/15885 en_US https://bigd.bracu.ac.bd/publications/community-health-workers-as-agents-of-change-negotiating-pathways-of-empowerment/ application/pdf BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD)
institution	Brac University
collection	Institutional Repository
language	en_US
topic	Bangladesh Community health workers Social norms Rural women Women's participation
spellingShingle	Bangladesh Community health workers Social norms Rural women Women's participation Mahmud, Simeen Sultan, Maheen Community health workers as agents of change: Negotiating pathways of empowerment
description	In Bangladesh, health and family planning programs were the ﬁrst major employers of rural women in outside paid work. Thus, women community health workers became the pioneers in bringing rural women into outside formal employment in a social/economic context that not only discouraged women’s participation in paid outside work but also actively restricted their mobility in the public domain. Although for women today, working as community health workers is no longer a departure from the norm, this was not always the case. This paper looks at contemporary women health workers in Bangladesh to explore how they have re-negotiated purdah and social norms to emerge as valued members of their families and respected members of their communities. While the work of a health worker was itself an extension of women’s traditional care roles and was conceived precisely because norms around women’s visibility and seclusion were so strong at the time that women were difficult to reach with male health workers, this job has been able to negotiate norms to make women’s breadwinner roles and mobility in the public sphere more socially acceptable. It is noteworthy that in this process of change and continuity, women’s trade-oﬀs have been more diﬃcult within the sphere of family and their individual lives, and relatively easier in the sphere of community life. There was some evidence that the speciﬁc organizational context in which women worked had bearing upon these changes.
format	Working Paper
author	Mahmud, Simeen Sultan, Maheen
author_facet	Mahmud, Simeen Sultan, Maheen
author_sort	Mahmud, Simeen
title	Community health workers as agents of change: Negotiating pathways of empowerment
title_short	Community health workers as agents of change: Negotiating pathways of empowerment
title_full	Community health workers as agents of change: Negotiating pathways of empowerment
title_fullStr	Community health workers as agents of change: Negotiating pathways of empowerment
title_full_unstemmed	Community health workers as agents of change: Negotiating pathways of empowerment
title_sort	community health workers as agents of change: negotiating pathways of empowerment
publisher	BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD)
publishDate	2022
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10361/15885
work_keys_str_mv	AT mahmudsimeen communityhealthworkersasagentsofchangenegotiatingpathwaysofempowerment AT sultanmaheen communityhealthworkersasagentsofchangenegotiatingpathwaysofempowerment
_version_	1814308620300451840

Community health workers as agents of change: Negotiating pathways of empowerment

Documents similaires