Pictured H.E. Sheikh Mohammed Belal and Runa Laila.
By Roy Lie A Tjam.
Reproductive Health Practices in Rural Bangladesh: State, Gender and Ethnicity
Runa Laila successfully defended her PhD thesis at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague on 29 August 2016. H.E. Sheikh Mohammed Belal, Ambassador of Bangladesh to the Netherlands was among the guests.
In 2006 Ms Laila was prompted to conduct the study after she had been horrified by observing fetuses lying in a street in Dhaka.
For additional pictures, please open the following link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/issthehague/sets/72157673165203155/
In her thesis, she explores an anomaly in the reproductive health situation of poor rural women in Bangladesh, namely the coexistence of significant fertility reduction at the same time as continued high maternal mortality due to dependency on home deliveries in the absence of skilled health professionals and health complications resulting from unsafe abortions.
The research is a comparison between mainstream patrilineal Bengali and matrilineal-matrilocal indigenous Garos in the same rural location, enabling the study to demonstrate how complex factors intersect and interact to form gender power structures which shape reproductive practice.
A village named Gachhabari (Tangail district, Dhaka division) was selected for its mixed ethnic population of patrilineal Bengali (mainstream Muslims and Hindu minority) and indigenous matrilineal Garo communities. By incorporating women’s voices articulated through their own narratives, the study aims to show how poor women from different ethnic backgrounds experience and navigate power at the household, community, market and the state level in relation to their reproductive practice.
The study contends that reproductive health policies and discourses are an outcome of existing power structures. Due to donor dependency, national population policies have been articulated in line with the donor discourse. In the mid-1990s, Bangladeshi population policy adopted a comprehensive reproductive healthcare approach aimed at ensuring health equality and reducing the gap between rich and poor. However, the findings of the study point to a more nuanced picture. Multiple interest groups and institutional arms of the state exercise forms of covert power via policies, discourses and knowledge produced by disciplinary institutions to govern the reproductive behavior of the poor.
Dr Runa Laila’s research is a tremendous contribution to the Bangladeshi health system and provides important insights which can help shape future policy.
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Photography by Dick de Jager.
