The higher education paradox: towards improving women’s empowerment, agency development and labour force participation in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

While expanding higher education is an important component of women’s agency development, subsequent employment in the labour market remains an impediment to realising gender equality in many developing countries. In Bangladesh, while the rate of women’s higher education completion has steadily increased, employment has not kept pace, resulting in a paradox of declining female labour force participation rates amongst graduates. Therefore, this paper asks: Does higher education improve women’s agency development and empowerment in Bangladesh? This case study, on the experience of female students at a public women’s college in Northern Bangladesh, distinguishes between their instrumental and intrinsic empowerment and identifies key determinants and constraints for their agency development. The research found that female students improved their intrinsic, but not their instrumental empowerment, because of four factors: stereotyped subject selection, limited IT competence, a lack of relevant job skills and limited career aspirations. In order to improve gender equality, the study recommends greater educational investment to improve the quality of female higher education, so that graduates develop the capabilities to meet labour market requirements, thereby narrowing the gap between their agency development and labour force participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• empowerment
• intrinsic and instrumental empowerment
• agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Rumana Ahmed is a young researcher. Her research interests include development studies, development informatics, gender, globalisation and sustainability. She has completed MPhil from University of New South Wales, Australia and is currently pursuing PhD degree from the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University in Australia.

Dr Nelia Hyndman-Rizk is an anthropologist and her research interests include the economic and social dimensions of migration and globalisation and transnational flows between the Middle East and Australia. Her areas of research specialisation are the Lebanese Diaspora, gender, migration and development, multiculturalism, cross-cultural competency and comparative ethnic entrepreneurship.

ORCID

Rumana Ahmed http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9223-2009