Gender; Youth; Empowerment; Gender Norms Archives - BRAC Institute of Governance and Development

Amidst Short Supply of Leadership and Sanitizers, Hearts Find Solace in Community-Driven Small Initiatives

Posted on 9 April 2020 | by BIGDAdmin | Leave a Comment

While scientists, public health officials, and policymakers continue their struggles to combat the outbreak of a global pandemic, people around the world are losing trust in their leaders. During this global crisis of leadership and adequate public health planning, one thing has continuously been our glimmer of hope, especially in a developing country like Bangladesh. The hope lies within the recent rise of initiatives from small groups of people and from existing entrepreneurs and social ventures.

The most amazing part of these initiatives is that the people are channeling their grief and expressing human solidarity by donating to the most vulnerable community of this country. As of the time I am writing this, Bidyanondo, a small social venture, has been able to secure a donation of over BDT 1,45,61,074, with the aim of distributing food to five lac marginalised people who might lose their income sources during the lockdown of Dhaka city. It was sad that one of their pages was taken down by the Facebook authority because a group of people reported it for some unknown reasons. When it happened for the second time, I lost hope. I lost hope in humanity and in peace; but they did not. These headstrong people continued to advertise their initiatives, along with the hardships they were facing through another page. And people all across the country started to promote it even more than before. Eventually, not only they were successful to bring back their page, but they were also able to secure more donation than their initial goal: a true example of turning negativity into positive branding—make lemonade when lemons are thrown. They have delivered food to the marginalised people and plan to continue doing so. They also have finished making personal protective equipment (PPE) for doctors with the approval from the Health Minister, and will start distributing it soon. They are even careful about deliveries. Their volunteers sign a disclaimer form which takes their consent regarding the risk they might face. The volunteers also have to declare health issues and agree on staying quarantined for 14 days inside of their home. The beautiful pictures of the volunteers maintaining the protective measures give a feeling that can only be felt seeing the first ray of sunshine in the morning. Moreover, they started to disinfect public transport and got a request from the Health Minister’s office to disinfect their offices.

When I came across the initiative of producing four lac PPE by two other ventures with the logistic support of an international corporation, I was wondering how the supply chain management will work here. Before I was done with my train of thoughts, I came across a Facebook post from the founder of another social venture, Kotha. She had posted a Google sheet and urged people, particularly health professionals to fill it up with information that can bridge the gap in information between suppliers of PPE and healthcare professionals. I also found a group of students who collaborated and decided to give groceries worth 100 to 110 BDT per person to the marginalised people each day. They managed to reach out to 150 people in a day, all of which are rickshaw pullers and CNG drivers. There is another initiative from Garments Shanghati that aims to reach the garment workers with food, soap, mask, and sanitizer.

The beauty of community-driven initiatives is that it gives the community control over resources. These creative initiatives, however, are facing difficulties because of their informal nature. In this scenario, our best approach would be giving them logistical and administrative support from the formal sector of the country, be it from government or non-government entities. These initiatives can be our floating boats for the upcoming few weeks, at least till the authority comes up with a concrete plan for the longer-term. The public health sector can join forces with these initiatives, which would make both parties stronger.

We always knew that our resources were limited. I personally believe that it is not the time to dissect what our government could have done, but did not or could not. Yes, this is a matter of frustration and concern too. But did we not go through this kind of frustration before? We did, and during those time we, as a nation, also learned where our limitations lie and where our strengths are; one of our strengths are these beautiful minds who come up with brilliant initiatives during a national crisis. So, instead of ruminating on our failures, I would rather focus on appreciating the initiatives and their success. These community-driven small initiatives can be the saviors for the marginalised people and vulnerable health sector in the coming few weeks, only if the formal sectors keep joining hands. I also feel research institutes and development organisations have their roles in this too. Among them, BRAC Institute of Governance and Development of BRAC University, for instance, is kickstarting a Rapid Research Response to COVID-19 based on digital ethnography to document these initiatives, so that, as a nation, we can learn and be better prepared in future.

Iffat Zahan is a Research Associate in the Research, Policy and Governance team at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, BRAC University.

Photo 1 : A Bidyanondo volunteer sprays disinfectant to help fight the COVID-19 outbreak. Credit- Bidyanondo
Photo 2 : By Raman Talpada from Pixabay

Wide Gender Gap in Freedom of Choice Among the Bangladeshi Youth

Posted on 17 February 2020 | by BIGDAdmin | Leave a Comment

In 2018, BIGD and BRAC conducted a nationwide youth survey, where young people across the country were interviewed about different dimensions of their lives. One of the dimensions was freedom of choice.

Freedom of choice is a basic human right. It is closely related to the sense of agency, which “refers to the subjective experience of controlling one’s action, and, through them, external events.”¹ So, the lack of freedom of choice may be detrimental to individual agency. Research has found that when people are not given a choice, they may lose their agency, not only in essence but also in action.

That’s why we were interested in the perceived freedom of choice of the youth. We asked them to rate their freedom of choice in some critical areas as very low/low/high/very high. Overall, 70-80% of youth reported enjoying a high and very high level of freedom in case of selecting an educational institute, occupation, and friends. Fewer youth enjoy high or very high levels of freedom in terms of physical movement and spending money. The lowest level of freedom is reported on selecting a spouse. These findings are not unexpected.

But we also found large differences in the level of freedom enjoyed by the female and male youth in all aspects of freedom. In the case of freedom to choose their occupation, this difference is 30% and in the case of spending money, it is more than 25%. We see the starkest difference in case of physical mobility. Percentage of women enjoying a high or very high level of freedom of physical mobility is less than half the freedom that male youth enjoy, 40% vs 83%.

We created an index of freedom of choice* by combining the responses on each type of freedom. The following figure shows the percentage of youth who scored high in the freedom of choice index by their education. We see two things. First, young women’s perceived freedom of choice is strongly correlated with their level of education—freedom of choice improves with education. Second, in each cohort, the difference between male and female youth is still very high though the difference seems to somewhat narrow with higher education.

Overall, only 10% of male youth had low freedom of choice index whereas the rate is 45% for female youth.

*This variable has been constructed by summing up the variables indicating freedom of the youth. For example, educational institution selection, friend selection, freedom of movement, spending money, spouse selection, and occupation selection. If the value is 5 and 6, it indicates “Higher freedom.” Accordingly, if it is 0, 1, and 2 then “Low /No freedom”

We also find that rural young women reported having lower freedom of choice in every aspect compared to their urban counterpart. Only a third of the rural young women mentioned enjoying the freedom of physical movement, spending money, and spouse selection. These rates are much higher for urban young women.

We tried to identify whether freedom of choice varies with the socio-economic background across three aspects—freedom of movement, freedom to spend money, and freedom to select an occupation. We find that freedom of choice is quite consistent and high for young men across socio-economic classes. But women from lower socio-economic classes enjoy the least amount of freedom in all three aspects. With improving socio-economic status, more female youth reported enjoying these rights. But even among the richest young women, perceived freedom of choice is lower than that of young men from any socio-economic class. Again, we can see the starkest difference in physical movement.

All these findings indicate to the sticky nature of gender norms.

We do see, though, that young women who are engaged in economic activities are more likely to feel freer than those who are not, particularly in physical movement, spending money, and friends and occupation selection.

But, in our survey, we also found that the participation of young women in economic activities is very low compared to men. Forty-five per cent of the women are neither studying not earning. The rate is just 5% among young men. The vast majority of young women not pursuing higher studies are getting married and dropping out of the labour market. Economic activity among young women with higher education drastically improves, albeit much lower than the rates among young men with any level of education. But only 4% of young women study beyond higher-secondary, half the rate of male youth. Female youth are also much less confident about their English language and computer skills, the two most important competencies demanded by modern-day jobs. So, it is not just freedom of choice, young women in Bangladesh are falling far behind in most important aspects of life, particularly those related to their participation in the economy.

This is precisely why the lack of physical mobility for young women is of grave concern. Being able to move freely is a precondition for women to access education, training, social network, and employment. It is the way of achieving economic empowerment, a stepping stone for young women to gain social empowerment, including freedom of choice. And mobility is exactly where young women in Bangladesh are struggling the most.

Nusrat Jahan is the Head of Communications and Knowledge Management at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, BRAC University.

¹Emilie A. Caspar et al., “Coercion Changes the Sense of Agency in the Human Brain,” Current Biology 26, no. 5 (March 7, 2016): 585–92, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.12.067.