‘A mobile phone is like a friendship. It depends from person to person how it is used': mobile phone relationships among low-income women in urban Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

This article presents ethnographic accounts of the mobile phone mediated experiences of connection and intimacy among young low-income women in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It argues that mobile phones are a ‘pathway to empowerment’ insofar as the ever-evolving social practices of ‘wrong-number friendships’, long-distance courtship, and the management and manipulation of new contacts on mobile phones broaden the range of social interactions, enable expressions of aspirational mobility, and contribute to the evolution of a sense of self. It also explores how the affective power of mobile phone communication in intimate relationships alters perceptions of distance and creates forms of ‘immobile mobility’. Thus, this article builds on research that argues that the material affordances of a mobile phone challenge social and cultural gender norms and power dynamics. Moreover, by drawing out how mobility, gender and class intersect with the social and emotional experiences of low-income women in Bangladesh, it goes beyond existing literature and offers a more nuanced perspective on the notion that access to technology among marginalised and disempowered groups leads to poverty alleviation and greater equality.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile phones
• communication
• mobility
• gender
• Dhaka
• Bangladesh

Introduction

Modern lives are increasingly mediated by information communication technologies. The global COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has accelerated this trend for those who can afford periods of self-isolation and social distance. Digital connection and communication are paramount to maintaining close ties between individuals who do not live in everyday proximity. This was also true for the women I met in Dhaka before the COVID-19 pandemic, who had left their families in rural villages to become part of the seemingly unlimited supply of cheap female migrant labour, whose exploitation has fuelled the growth of Bangladesh’s garment export sector (Kabeer and Mahmud 2004). However, there has been little attention given to the interaction between mobility, technology and social life for young urban migrant women in Bangladesh. While they do not share the intense mobility of being always online, and on the move, experienced by some in the ‘rich north’, they do have a ‘digitized mobile life’ through the routine interpersonal communication embedded in everyday practice (Elliott and Urry 2010). These interactions involve the navigation of the boundaries of their mobility and the negotiation of gender norms in order to expand their available opportunities and make independent, strategic choices. Acknowledging that this process is an everyday occurrence among marginalised and disempowered groups, such as low-income women, provides an insight into the social dimensions of women’s empowerment that are less easily measured by development matrices (Nazneen, Hossain, and Chopra 2019).

Central to the twenty-first century debate about the impact of Information Communication Technology (ICTs) is the extent to which they are tools for curing inequality. Early anthropology of the mobile phone among low-income and underprivileged populations suggested that, while mobile phones made a considerable impact on the landscape of communication, they were not the magic bullet in the quest to alleviate poverty (Horst and Miller 2006). The mass uptake of internet-enabled mobile phones, and the networks and scalability of sociability achievable via social media, has increased the power of a mobile phone to bring about large-scale social change (Miller et al. 2016). Comparative studies of mobile phone use reveal that increased digital communication has contradictory effects, for instance, social media creates as well as decreases inequality, and strengthens as well as subverts gender norms (Miller et al. 2016).

Nevertheless, the concept of a digital divide, exacerbated by lack of access and barriers to use of mobile technology, remains central wherever the key function of technology is defined as access to information and resources to increase economic opportunities (Hossain and Beresford 2012). In the context of gender and development, technology is framed as empowering for women because of these economic networking capabilities. In Bangladesh, this apparent link is exemplified in the Grameen Bank’s microcredit and village phone scheme (Aminuzzaman, Baldersheim, and Jamil 2003). However, the idea of a natural progression from Bangladeshi women’s financial inclusion and contributions towards national economic growth, to empowerment and reducing gender inequality, is questioned by many (Hunt and Kasynathan 2001; Kabeer, Mahmud, and Tasneem, 2018; Nazneen, Hossain, and Chopra 2019).

The notion of ‘immobile mobility’ (Wallis 2013) is particularly significant in the context of Bangladesh because restrictions on women’s physical and virtual mobility are central to the maintenance of a moral order framed around notions of being in the right place and of appropriate relationships (White 2012). This is already challenged by the practicalities of economic reality and compounded by anxiety of moral breakdown over the apparent rise of individualism and personal desire (White 2012). Consequently, women’s mobile phone use is also governed by cultural ideas of sexual purity projected onto online safety concerns. The fear of contending with harassment is cited as one of the main barriers for the uptake of online technology among South Asian women (Sambasivan et al. 2019). The widespread online abuse of women and the corresponding coping mechanisms to avoid damaged reputations adds another layer to the balancing act of women’s mobility through virtual space (Sambasivan et al. 2019).

Crucially, global ethnographic research of the everyday practices of mobile phone use reveals that the device can challenge social and cultural norms by functioning as a vehicle for aspiration, mobility, distraction, and human companionship and in doing so gives the user an, albeit limited, power to choose (Wallis 2011; Doron 2012; Rangaswamy and Arora 2016; Huang 2018). This article builds on this approach in exploring the experiences of women living in Bangladesh and how they use their mobile phones to maintain social and cultural expectations as well as to fulfil personal desires of mobility and connectivity. The research is based on three months of in-depth ethnographic research in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Evidence from over 40 interviews and numerous informal conversations, suggests that for women working in low-income sectors, mobile phones are an instrument of communication through which significant emotional ties with other individuals are maintained, rather than predominantly a source of information and resources. It therefore aims to fill a gap in the academic literature of how modern technology is changing social relations for young working-class women in Bangladesh. By focusing on how new technology creates a space for new forms of sociability that challenge notions of gender and mobility, this article seeks to move away from the idea that women in Bangladesh are subject to a gendered digital divide where spatial boundaries are hard borders that prevent access to technology and mobility for women in Bangladesh (Hossain and Beresford 2012).

In the first part of this paper, I outline current perspectives on the position of poor women in Bangladesh and the perceived trajectory towards empowerment from a development perspective. In the second section, I analyse previous research that interrogates the role of a mobile phone in challenging social and cultural gender norms and I examine the intersection of mobility, gender, and class with mobile phone technology in the context of Bangladesh. Finally, I also address the concepts of technologies of the self, agency, and empowerment, in order to establish a framework in which to position the role of the mobile phone in the lives and relationships of women in urban Bangladesh. The third section explores the significance of a mobile phone in the lives of young migrant women living far away from the villages they describe as home, and the emotions associated with connection and disconnection from their families. It also presents ethnographic data regarding relationships initiated via mobile phones and maintained entirely through digital technology. Notions of ‘immobile mobility’, empowerment through small acts of defiance and strategic life choices, perceptions of distance, and the affective dimension of the phone, are analysed through the stories of wrong-number friendships, long-distance courtship and marriage, and the avalanche of wanted and unwanted male attention that my respondents reported. Thus, I conclude that mobile phones can be construed as a pathway to empowerment insofar as new social practices of family intimacy mean that individuals can live a life apart, as well as a life together, and in doing so broaden the range of their social interactions and enable expressions of aspirational mobility.

Gender inequality and ‘pathways to empowerment’ in Bangladesh

Academic interest in Bangladeshi women is often centred around economic and financial developments and their impact on women’s ability to generate income and access resources. The effect of millions of poor rural women entering urban wage employment as a result of the growth of the garment sector is described as ‘simultaneously emancipatory and highly exploitative’ (Feldman 2009, 269). While arguably providing women with a greater role in the family and financial decision making, it has also reinforced and intensified women’s marginalisation (Zaman 2001). Patriarchal hierarchies are reproduced in factories and stigma is attached to the female workers who have transgressed cultural expectations of domesticity (Siddiqi 2000). Research into the socio-cultural factors that explain gender inequality in Bangladesh tends to explore female power and status in the context of family and household power structures. Amongst urban working-class women, this dynamic is measured in terms of women’s autonomy, especially decision making in relation to access, control, and management of resources (Kabeer 1997).

Grameen Bank’s microcredit schemes and Village Phone programs have put Bangladesh in the spotlight for innovation in financial services and technology as a tool for social and economic development. Rural women were the target of both these initiatives and subsequent assessments focus on establishing a link between rural women’s financial inclusion and empowerment (Aminuzzaman, Baldersheim, and Jamil 2003; Ainul et al. 2013; Duvendack and Palmer-Jones 2017; Rahman 2018). While these studies recognise that access to mobile phones widens social networks and increases contact between families separated by migration, the social impact of mobile phones has been seen as secondary to their role in poverty alleviation (Aminuzzaman, Baldersheim, and Jamil 2003). This approach also fails to engage critically with the idea that national economic growth, increased opportunities for education and employment, and material improvement in living standards at the individual level, naturally and universally lead to women’s empowerment (Nazneen, Hossain, and Chopra 2019).

A more recent development in digital inclusion is the state-sponsored vision of a ‘Digital Bangladesh’ which aims to bring about a poverty free and more inclusive society through access to ICT by 2021 (Aziz 2020). However, a lack of attention on the socio-cultural barriers means that this policy has not necessarily improved women’s digital inclusion (Genilo, Akther and Haque 2015) and Bangladesh continues to have one of the largest mobile gender gaps in the world (GSMA 2020). Nevertheless, these grand digital aspirations do reflect the perceived transformative potential of mobile phone ownership and connectivity.

Mobile phones, mobility, and gender

While mobile phones are potentially a tool for improving lives from an economic or financial perspective (Horst and Miller 2006), recent ethnographies of mobile phone use across the globe suggest that the more significant impact of the widespread adoption of mobile phones lies in their ability to transform social practices and alter gender power relations (Archambault 2013; Huang 2018; Kenny 2016; Kraemer 2017; Madianou and Miller 2012; Miller et al. 2016; Miller and Venkatraman 2018; Wallis 2011; Waltorp 2013). By mediating mobility and providing new opportunities for the negotiation of boundaries, the mobile phone facilitates the navigation of norms. Additionally, the potential for individual empowerment is bolstered by an evolving sense of self nurtured by interpersonal interactions that provoke reflection.

A mobile phone is viewed by family members as an ‘object of distrust’ in the hands of women, which acknowledges the object’s potential as a disruptive force (Doron 2012, 435). The monitoring of South Asian women’s digital activities by close social relations and the influence that family members exert on women’s technological inclusion is also evidence of the power of mobile phones to affect social and cultural norms (Sambasivan et al. 2018; Ibtasam et al. 2019). Consequent patriarchal control of women’s mobile phone use meant that, to a certain extent, the cultural expectations surrounding women’s phone use ‘ultimately reinforced social roles and gender ideology’ (Doron 2012, 422).

Much of the suspicion regarding the use of mobile phones resides in its materiality; as a small, portable, easily concealed object, it can facilitate secretive and/or private communication (Doron 2012). It therefore has become an important tool in mediating intimate relationships and other personal contacts. Although phones are also repositories of evidence insofar as they store a trail of communication through call logs, messages, and contacts, they also enable lies and deception (Archambault 2013; Kenny 2016; Kraemer 2017). Moreover, the virtual spaces created through mobile, social media on a phone also include many ‘hidden and private places’, adding a further layer of concealment and blurring the distinction between public and private space (Waltorp 2013, 556). Crucially, not only do the affordances of a mobile phone allow the covert maintenance of unsanctioned relationships, they allow the user to expand their social networks and establish new interpersonal relationships (Andersen 2013; Horst and Miller 2006; Huang 2018; Kenny 2016; Kraemer 2017).

However, the expansive potential of mobile phone technology goes further than increasing the number of connections available to the user. A mobile phone has the capacity to help the user acquire knowledge either through written text or interpersonal connection, and increases the range of experience of an individual. Doron considers mobile phones as a ‘technology of the self’ with the power to reshape an individual’s understanding of themselves and their desires (Doron 2012, 416). This is based on Foucault’s definition of ‘technologies of the self’ that enables individuals to transform themselves through their action and behaviour (Foucault 1988, 18). Mobile phone interactions and the social navigation required contribute to an evolving sense of self.

Furthermore, the connective power of a mobile phone is central to discourses related to movement, even if that movement is communicative or imaginative rather than corporeal (Elliott and Urry 2010). The notion of ‘immobile mobility’ illustrates how mobility and technology interact with prior social and cultural practices, and intersect with gender and class (Wallis 2013). While mobile phone users might be relatively immobile insofar as long working hours and low wages limit opportunities to move beyond their workplace and their residence, technology allows them to ‘overcome the spatial, temporal, physical and structural boundaries’ (Wallis 2011, 472) and participate in a form of mobility through the new forms of sociability.

What is more, in Bangladesh gendered positions are constructed through the mobility and visibility of women in urban public space and control of female sexuality is associated with restricted female mobility (Salway, Jesmin, and Rahman 2005), therefore women’s use of mobile phones is potentially transgressive. The capacity to be physically immobile yet virtually mobile when using a phone disrupts the distinction between public and private space. While social space can be defined as public or private, and virtual or physical, these spaces are overlapping and entangled. Therefore, social space ‘is not a solidified surface of enactment’ and consequently must be carefully navigated (Vigh 2009, 133). If the public (for instance a non-kin man) can enter into interactions with the private sphere (the household and the women who reside in it) through phone communication, then phone usage is an activity that requires boundary management, moral choices and, in some cases, the construction of ‘digital purdah’ (Huang 2018).

Moreover, pertinently, the gendered digital divide in South Asia also intersects with class. Women from lower socio-economic groups are less likely to have access to phones and social media than their middle-class counterparts, their social media accounts are subject to more surveillance by family members, and they are more likely to limit their contact networks to known individuals (Miller and Venkatraman 2018). As such, the social practices described by the working-class women in this research suggest that they are participating in a ‘process of cultural struggle’ (Huang 2018, 108) that represents a negotiation of gendered boundaries.

The material affordances of mobile phones therefore mediate mobility and present the user with opportunities and choices. However, while a mobile phone is ‘an active agent in evolving gendered relationships’ (Tacchi, Kitner, and Crawford 2012, 529), the real power of the mobile phone as an instrument to challenge boundaries and norms lies not with the technology invested in the device, but with the individual user’s agency and the fragmented decisions they make. Furthermore, deployment of the terms gender and agency necessitates an analysis of the notion of empowerment, especially given that information communication technologies are considered as potential ‘tools of empowerment’ (Hossain and Beresford 2012).

Agency and empowerment are two entangled terms that are seen as essential to social change but are often problematic when applied to gender inequality and development. Agency is the ability to make choices within structural constraints, but also extends to negotiation, deception, manipulation, subversion and resistance, as well as processes of reflection and analysis (Kabeer 1999, 438). Therefore, mobile phones are an important resource through which agency is expressed, both through access and control over the device, and through the actions and behaviours of the user as they interact with others. Problematically, applied to poor women in the global south, the concept of agency has been used to ‘construct a rational, self-interested basis’ upon which an individual chooses to conform or challenge gendered expectations’ (Wilson 2013, 85). The idea that mobile phones function as a ‘technology of the self’ would appear to support the construction of ‘neoliberal agentic subjects’ responsible for their self-improvement (Wilson 2013, 84). However, an evolving sense of self should not be automatically equated with a linear notion of self-improvement.

Empowerment is a process of change through which the disempowered acquire resources and agency and in doing so expand their ability to live the lives they want (Kabeer 1999). The term empowerment has become a catch-all when talking about gender equality in international policy circles with a disproportionate emphasis on women’s paid work and access to resources as a ‘pathway to empowerment’ (Porter 2013; Nazneen, Hossain, and Chopra 2019). Given that a mobile phone is a resource with expansive potential, and the possibilities of privacy afforded by the technology increase an individual’s capacity to make choices, mobile phones are in theory empowering. Crucially, the empowering potential of a mobile phone lies in its capacity to shape relationships and fulfil emotional desires for connection, and the feelings of loneliness, excitement, anticipation, and satisfaction facilitated by mobile phone connections contribute to an individual’s sense of self.

Mobile phones and the relationships that exist on them, form part of the interdependent mobilities that produce social life (Elliott and Urry 2010). Research on the urban poor in South Asia reveals that mobile phones are used extensively for leisure and pleasure rather than for economic purposes (Rangaswamy and Arora 2016). While mobile phone ownership does not precipitate upwards socio-economic mobility, mobile connectivity is often an expression of aspirational mobility (Rangaswamy and Arora 2016). However, this study only included young men and little research has been conducted on their female counterparts. Research into wrong-number relationships¹ among female ‘information agents’² in rural Bangladesh suggests that these phone relationships contribute to evolving gender norms by testing boundaries that inform ethical self-formation and allow women to imagine unorthodox futures (Huang 2018). However, the female ‘information agents’ are outliers in rural society because their occupation requires them to act as independent businesses and move between villages.

Consequently, through understanding how mobile phone relationships, romantic and otherwise, have been incorporated into the paradoxes and tensions present in gender norms and mobility for urban working-class women in Bangladesh, this research develops a more nuanced understanding of female empowerment that also takes aspirational communicative mobility into account.

Methodology

This article is based on research conducted over a three-month period between January and March 2020 in and around Dhaka City. Respondents were low-income working women between the ages of 16 and 30. The majority were currently employed in wage labour either in a cotton spinning mill or in the multitude of garment factories on the outskirts of Dhaka. Some key respondents had previously worked in the garments industry for a few years but were now working for political organisations or workers’ unions. Other informants worked in beauty parlours in the district of Mohammadpur, Dhaka City. Access to respondents was achieved through NGO networks, attendance and participation in workers’ union events, and research assistants with personal connections to factory management or beauty parlours.

One of the challenges of researching low-income women was finding times in which they could be interviewed. Working hours were long, and they had domestic chores to complete outside of formal employment. Fridays, the Islamic day of religious observance when most workplaces are closed, were therefore key opportunities to spend time with working women. Interviews occurred either at the union office where members gathered for meetings, or at the residence of key informants. Other interviews were taken at the women’s workplace, with the cooperation of their employer.

Methods used included participant observation, group interviews, in-depth interviews, and observation of social media and call logs of mobile phones. An iterative approach was adopted; much of the transcription and analysis was conducted during the research period and therefore the research questions evolved from respondents’ responses. Unlike many of their middle-class counterparts, low-income women in Bangladesh do not speak English, so the help of a native Bangla speaking research assistant was essential to the research process. Interviews were therefore conducted through an interpreter. This approach allowed for probing questions and gave the respondents space to describe their experience at length. At times the process of interpretation required a great deal of patience from all parties and this makes it harder for the researcher to incorporate tone and implicit meaning into the research findings. Nevertheless, the research assistant’s perspective as a cultural insider also informed a deeper understanding of the social and cultural expectations of young women in Bangladesh.

Finally, the direction of the research was also to a certain extent shaped by my own experience of gender and mobility while living and working alongside middle-class Bangladeshis. Access to the field involved navigating concerns regarding local gender norms, suitable modes of transport, perceptions of safety for women in the city, and managing my expectations of freedom and independent movement. Consequently, excursions had to be carefully scheduled, and, combined with my respondents’ short windows of availability, meant that follow-up interviews were rare. However, as a foreign researcher, I represented a world disconnected from their everyday lives and therefore they could disclose aspects of their private communication in a more frank and open manner than perhaps they would have with a member of their own community.

Ethnographic findings: connection and intimacy at a distance

The beauty parlour was well hidden, nestled at back of the small lobby, on the ground floor of a residential block. There was no colourful sign, or open store front, or reception desk. The entire establishment was three small windowless rooms where two junior beauticians and their boss lived and worked. Close confines for intimate, private procedures. Female spaces away from the prying eyes of the public sphere.

Mysha moved to Dhaka from the countryside to work in the beauty parlour when she was 18. She has now been working for 6 years. She started earning to help support her family. Moving to the big city therefore, involves taking on significant responsibility.

Mysha’s smartphone had recently broken beyond repair. She could still communicate with her family using the ‘office’³ phone if there was a specific reason. However, without her own phone, she did not talk to her grandmother as frequently and this reduced contact saddened her. She tells me she will never throw her broken handset away. The now redundant object is important to her because she bought it with her first salary, but she also keeps the phone because ‘it is like a friendship’ and ‘you do not throw friendships away’. (Fieldnotes from informal conversation with Mysha, 6th February⁴)

This vignette firstly demonstrates how mobility creates conditions of separation and immobility for young women and their families, and secondly how a mobile phone can be construed as a tool of practical and symbolic empowerment. It allows Mysha to maintain close relationships with her family on her own terms; phone ownership gives her more choice over when and how she communicates with her family and other contacts. But it is also a totem of her achievement as a wage earner and provider. Thirdly, the comparison of a phone as a friendship suggests that there is a powerful affective dimension associated with the object of a phone among young women.

As already highlighted, access to a phone varied among the research participants. Some shared it with members of their current household, others had recently started paid work and had not yet saved up to buy one. However, nearly all stressed the importance of owning a phone to keep in regular contact with family who lived in a different location. Women without access to a phone expressed the desire to have one to alleviate the loneliness they felt from being separated from their family. This affirms the idea that mobile phones are primarily used to maintain close contacts, rather than broaden access to information and resources (Ling et al. 2014). Crucially, phone communication allowed them to minimise the feeling of distance and maintain the intimacy with their family that normally comes from proximity. For example, for 18-year-old Ayesha who left her natal village to work at the spinning mill two years ago, the anxiety of being separated from family was mediated through being reachable on a mobile phone. On occasions ‘when she feels so much depressed’ she can talk to her parents. Then she feels like ‘they are in front of me, they are nearby me, I am with them’. Her phone is comforting and allows her to feel like she is close to her family. The feeling of disconnection has also become part of Ayesha’s daily life. On days when she leaves her phone in the factory dormitory when she goes to work, she feels tense. Her physical proximity to her phone is intrinsically linked with the proximity she feels towards her relatives.

Furthermore, the visual element of a video call was highly significant as a means to feel present in the lives of loved ones. Video calling allowed one spinning mill worker to ‘observe her brother [who lived and worked in the UAE], is he good or bad, feeling sick, feeling well, getting healthy, getting sick.’ Video calling was used as a visual confirmation of her brother’s report. Consequently, video calling can be conceived as a form of virtual travel that allows women to feel like they are transcending geographical and social distance (Elliott and Urry 2010, 15–16) and therefore represents a form of ‘immobile mobility’ (Wallis 2013) that reinforces bonding ties.

These examples reveal how mobile phone contact has become embedded in the fabric of everyday life. These routines largely maintain existing social and cultural expectations and minimise the disruptive impact of female mobility outside of the home (Tacchi, Kitner, and Crawford 2012). Working women can maintain their virtual presence in the domestic sphere that they have physically left through frequent communication with intimate family members. Finally, the emotional attachment to the device reflects its significant role in maintaining social ties and is also perhaps an expression of dissatisfaction with their position of relative immobility, exacerbated by class and gender.

Meaningful ‘wrong-number’ friendships

While there is a cultural expectation that women’s mobile phone use should be monitored to discourage transgressive behaviour and protect them from negative aspects of technology (Sambasivan et al. 2018), my research illustrated that circumstances did not always make this possible. Young, unmarried, working women who had migrated to Dhaka were often living independently from their parents. With no one looking over their shoulders, they were free to make their own choices regarding who to engage in phone communication with. In particular, the women faced choices regarding whether or not to respond to the men who messaged or called them. Some reported that they had no interest in talking to men on their phones. Almost all initially said that they would not pick up an unknown number, and would block persistent callers. However, as interviews developed, some respondents would reveal they were in contact with a man, carefully defined as a friend, not a boyfriend, that had started from a ‘wrong-number’ phone call.⁵ These communications were always initiated by the men, the women would never return their call, but would pick up if they felt like it. This constitutes an ‘ongoing negotiation over the meanings of the boundaries between public and private’ (Feldman 2001) and a challenge to the gendered control of mobility and networks (Hossain and Beresford 2012). They also reveal that women use their mobile phones to expand their social networks beyond their family and colleagues and they enjoy the sociality of these connections.

Zeynab is a 24-year-old spinning mill worker who has been working for eight years and was happy to talk about her ‘wrong-number’ friend. It started a couple of years ago when he called her, supposedly by mistake. He started to apologise for his error, they continued talking and became friends. This developed into habitual audio calls two or three times a week, before progressing to video calling once a week or once a fortnight. She says she is comfortable sharing her problems and her private information with him, firstly because she trusts him, and secondly because he is ‘not with her known surroundings’. She is able to make this choice because of the ‘unparalleled privacy and independence’ afforded by her mobile phone (Doron 2012, 415).

For Zeynab this is a meaningful and stable friendship (or romance, but she does not define it as such). While she keeps it secret from her mother, her siblings know about her ‘wrong-number’ friend. The physical distance between them also distances her from the scandal of unsanctioned communication with a non-kin man. While their connection has a digital trace, her relationship with her ‘wrong-number’ friend is essentially invisible. The capacity of a mobile phone to keep multiple strands of social contact separate (Horst and Miller 2006, 83) means the existence of her friend can be disclosed at her discretion. Consequently, the mobile phone allows her to create her own symbolic boundaries that challenge the public/private gendered order (Huang 2018). Moreover, she was not the only one to describe small acts of defiance and therefore the maintenance of these ‘wrong-number’ friendships can be seen as a new social practice, afforded by technology, that represents a shift in gender norms (Nazneen, Hossain, and Chopra 2019; Thapar-Björkert, Maiorano, and Blomkvist 2019).

‘Married through mobile phone’

Mobile phone relationships were sometimes more than an exciting secret. Farzia’s account of her marriage demonstrates the power of a mobile phone both to initiate, negotiate and maintain relationships, and the nature of the choices faced by women who are already in precarious and vulnerable circumstances. Farzia is 22, she has worked in the garments industry for five years, got married a year ago, and was a regular member of the worker’s union where we met. She sits down eagerly and looks assuredly at me. Her outfit is impeccably coordinated. Yellow and pink salwar kameez with three red glass bangles on her wrist and dangly earrings that shine yellow and glimmer, almost blindingly, in the harsh indoor lighting. She wears her matching headscarf in the distinctive style of the working class; horizontally across her forehead and tucked behind her ears. Her face is small and thin, skin pale and blotchy, deprived of sunlight, and her pink eyeshadow, although carefully chosen to match her outfit, gives her sickly appearance. One day last year she went to visit her aunt, she tells me. Unbeknownst to her, her husband-to-be passed by the house. He saw her and fell in love with her immediately. Her smitten suitor convinced a cousin to relinquish Farzia’s phone number. Armed with her number, her prospective husband tried to make contact. The first time he rang, she did not pick up as it was an unknown number. But he rang four or five times and she thought, ‘this might be from any of my relatives … I have to pick this [up]’. When she answered the phone, he explained who he was, and where he had seen her, and told her ‘I like you and now I want to marry you’. Her response was unequivocal, ‘I don’t like you and I don’t want to marry you’ and then she cut the phone call.

Yet he continued to call. She blocked his number but he got another number and called her again. He called her from ten or eleven numbers. She blocked all of them. Finally, she picked up. He told her, ‘Please listen to me, I'll not bother you again, if you listen to what I have to say. I'm not insulting you or harassing you, I just want you to listen to my proposal’. He offered to live in her natal village ‘ … .and I will treat [your mother] like my own mother’, meaning she could avoid the potentially painful separation from her family and sometimes difficult task of being accepted into her husband’s family (Alam 2018, 120). He also, via her aunt, contacted her mother but his efforts to convince her mother failed.

Nevertheless, Farzia’s resolve was wavering; she started picking up his calls and engaging in conversations lasting ten or fifteen minutes. It had only been a couple of weeks since he had first started calling, but now he made an appointment for her to be at a marriage office in Dhaka. By the time the day arrived, both sides of the family were opposed to it, and, intriguingly, Farzia herself had not agreed to go ahead with the marriage. However, there was a degree of ambivalence as she kept the appointment at the kazi office.⁶ She arrived expecting to meet the man who was so ardently pursuing her but his grand entrance came through a phone. He had recently gone to work on a palm oil plantation in Malaysia, but had made all the necessary arrangements for the marriage. The agreement of both parties to marry has to be a public declaration with a witness. In the absence of the groom’s physical presence, the kazi agreed that a video call would work as a substitute. Hence her initial statement that she got ‘married through mobile phone’.

There seems to be a fine line between persistence being perceived as a display of commitment and seriousness of intention, before crossing over into unwanted attention. While Farzia was clear on the facts, it was harder to get her to articulate her feelings regarding this momentous life event. Other respondents who received male attention through mobile phones tend to describe it as an irritation, but perhaps it is not socially acceptable to admit to anything else. Although Farzia initially blocked his calls, and in doing so used the affordances of mobile communication to resist his advances, she does appear to ‘give in’ without feeling the need to justify her change of heart. Her actions however represent complex ‘ethical-boundary work’ (Huang 2018) as she is risking the potential estrangement of her immediate family, who had previously threatened to disown her if she accepted this man’s proposal. Moreover, her behaviour could be interpreted as a strategic life choice and this small act of defiance is arguably part of the process of ‘empowerment’ (Nazneen, Hossain, and Chopra 2019). She has asserted her own agency in a cultural context where arranged marriages are the norm (Naved, Newby, and Amin 2001). Her agency is not without risk (Evans 2013) but there are gains. Her husband has given her a smartphone which she uses to watch movies and access global news, and she has companionship through the phone without, yet, having to alter her day-to-day living arrangements.

One year later, they still have not met in a non-virtual setting. As she has Wi-Fi in her lodgings, she talks with her husband via video call every day for several hours. When asked how she feels towards the man on the other side of the screen, she blushes. ‘Yeah, I feel good’, she says wryly. Video calling makes her feel that he is in front of her. On audio calls she feels he is far away. Her mobile phone use therefore alters her perception of distance in her relationship (Elliott and Urry 2010, 15).

At every stage of Farzia’s story, her mobile phone has been instrumental. The initial connection was forged when her husband-to-be got hold of her mobile number. He pursued her through her phone, married her through the kazi’s phone, and their relationship is sustained through the intimacy that video chat enables. Paradoxically, her mobile phone allows her to be immobile. Her smartphone is such a precious possession that she only uses it at home and does not carry it on her when she is out or at work. The affordance of mobile technology allows her to ‘overcome the spatial, temporal, physical and structural boundaries’ (Wallis 2011, 472) that are imbued in the social and cultural norms of her gender and socio-economic status, and participate in a form of ‘immobile mobility’ that makes her feel wanted and valued.

Exploiting precarious connections

Although Zeynab and Farzia’s accounts represent meaningful relationships established through a mobile phone, other respondents told cautionary tales of the possible consequences of such connections. Most had heard of women who had been persuaded to lend money, or were tricked into marriage by men they met through phones. However, Fatima’s story challenges this narrative and is an example of how mobile phones enable individuals to make strategic life choices in precarious situations. While it lacks the warm glow normally associated with success stories of female empowerment that emerge from international development narratives (Nazneen, Hossain, and Chopra 2019), it is evidence of mobile technology’s potential to form ‘bridging ties’ to access resources (c.f. Hossain and Beresford 2012), even if it is not clear who is exploiting who.

Fatima is about 30 years old and has a two-and-a-half-year-old son, from an abusive marriage to a man who it then transpired already had a wife and child in another village. She was interviewed for a documentary published on YouTube, in which she described her desperate financial situation and said that she wanted to find a good husband. She also gave out her phone number and said it was attached to her bKash⁷ account which precipitated an avalanche of interested men, from Bangladesh and abroad. She was proud of how ‘clever’ she was in the way she managed her different phone numbers and SIM cards, and faced with a barrage of marriage propositions (often accompanied by requests for sex), she would filter her suitors by deciding who could access her an alternative ‘personal’ phone number. Her IMO account⁸ documents the extent of her mobile connections. On one day alone she had multiple missed calls from 15 different men who had obtained her number from the documentary. The callers were mostly offering her money if she agreed to marry them, or send them revealing pictures of herself, or meet them in a hotel for sex. She said the most she would do was flirt with the men she liked the most. Even without conceding to their demands, some still gave her money (between 2000 and 6000 taka⁹ per donation) which had allowed her to pay off her debts, buy a smartphone and buy a sewing machine. She estimates that she has received between 25,000 and 30,000 taka worth of donations since the documentary aired three months previously. She feels that her quality of life has improved as a result of it, however, she does ‘feel bad that they only want to help [her] for sex purpose’. While she uses her connectivity to her economic advantage, these connections come with emotional baggage.

With each request, she was negotiating her own ethical boundaries whilst trying to ensure that she could obtain the means to survive. This is probably not what policy makers had in mind when they refer to women’s financial autonomy and the power of a mobile phone to access resources (Aminuzzaman, Baldersheim, and Jamil 2003), and is a far cry from the harmonious vision of empowerment that bridges gender gaps (Hossain and Beresford 2012). Nevertheless, Fatima, for the moment at least, can live from the money she earns through her mobile phone. However, her engagement with the expansive potential of phone connections seems to be more than a cold economic calculation. There is a playful element to who she decides to ‘blow kisses’ to, she grins as she tells me she does not talk to Kabir because she ‘does not like his face’. Finally, her most valued contact is a 45-year-old Bangladeshi man who lives in London. She believes he is a good man and has intentions to marry her when he comes to Bangladesh. He is the only man she is prepared to ‘blow some kisses to’ without him asking. Although this interactivity is in part the product of desperate circumstances, she has the power to negotiate, to manipulate, and to reflect on her sense of self and how she wants to be perceived by others. This suggests an aspirational dimension to her mobile phone relationships that resonates with the aspirational appropriation of Facebook among young men in the urban slums of India (Rangaswamy and Arora 2016). In both cases, the mobile phone offers poor and marginalised individuals previously unimaginable channels of communication with international, richer counterparts.

In Zeynab, Farzia, and Fatima’s cases, the combination of living far away from their family households and their status as independent wage earners makes phone ownership a necessary part of their daily lives. Their distance and relative immobility meant that mobile phones are the primary form of communication and expressions of intimacy. Moreover, these circumstances also present opportunities to challenge the social and cultural norms that segregate socialising between young men and women. Engaging with and exploring the possibilities of connection afforded by a mobile phone was viewed as an entertaining, but potentially risky pastime. Negotiating these boundaries sometimes led to long-term, meaningful connections that required sometimes life-changing strategic choices. Mobile phones therefore enable forms of mobility, agency, and empowerment for women in circumstances where their mobility, agency and pathways to empowerment are restricted.

Conclusion

Despite the initial mobility in migration, once in employment, many low-income women are rendered relatively immobile. The geographical dispersal of working women due to shifting economic opportunities and social expectations means that, for my respondents, important social relations are maintained predominately, and sometimes exclusively, through a mobile phone. Firstly, for the factory workers the ability to stay connected with an intimate family network compensated for the physical distance that otherwise isolated them from their loved ones. This is particularly apparent in the affective dimension of video calls. This constant connection also enables a degree of monitoring through family members keeping track of women’s activities, especially when they were out of the house. However, although this ‘wireless leash’ (Qiu 2007) limits independent movement, it can be temporarily severed. During one interview my respondent was receiving repeated calls from her family as she was due to meet her prospective husband for the first time. She appeared apprehensive about her impending life change and so turned her phone off rather than answer the calls. A second form of mobile connection is illustrated in the creation of new connections. These could expose women to harassment, exploitation and societal condemnation and explains why Farzia initially described it as a ‘dangerous thing.’ However, the decisions taken by my respondents to answer men’s calls and engage in long-distance relationships suggests the boundaries of societally constructed gender relations are being actively contested by young phone-owning women. The nature of mobile phone communication, specifically the ease with which they could ignore a call, or block a number, or change their own number, meant they could easily decide which ‘wrong-number’ romantic they wanted to talk to. These interactions are private and personal, and judging who to trust involves navigating social norms and personal ethical boundaries, which are expressions of agency and impact on their sense of self.

My research revealed that mobile phones are not tools or pathways to empowerment in the neoliberal development sense. The cultural expectations and social control that constrict female mobility and agency are to a certain extent reproduced through continual connection and the monitoring of women’s phone usage. However, the potentiality of a mobile phone to forge new connections results in social practices that alter the experience of distance and creates forms of ‘immobile mobility’ (Wallis 2011). These phone friendships can become meaningful relationships and represent aspirational mobility in women who have little control over other aspects of their lives. They are therefore strategic life choices that can be considered an exertion of individual agency and a small but empowering act. Nevertheless, engaging in communication with non-kin men is not without risk. Consequently, many women who own mobile phones chose not to engage with its expansive potential.

Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based could not have been achieved without the kindness and support of Sanjeeb Drong and Tuly Mrong at IPDS, Nazm-us Saadat, Tanjina Alam Milee, Rezwana Shahrin, and Rabeya Mita. I am grateful to the network of organisations associated with the STITCH project who assisted with accessing respondents. I also extend my sincere thanks to Ellen Bal and the Social and Cultural Anthropology department at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam for guidance and support in this project, and the invaluable feedback of those who read the initial draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hannah Sibona

Hannah Sibona holds an MSc in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and is currently on a research placement with the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

Notes

1 Where contact is initiated through a man calling a woman. Claiming that they had dialled the wrong number is used as a pretext to start a conversation.

2 A social enterprise initiative where ‘agents’ provide mobile phone and internet services to rural villages for a small fee.

3 ‘Office’ in Bangladesh is a synonym for workplace.

4 To protect the anonymity of participants, pseudonyms have been used.

5 The initial call, supposedly the result of a misdialled number, provides an excuse to start a conversation.

6 Equivalent of a registry office where marriages are officiated.

7 Commonly used mobile banking application.

8 Social media application that is popular in Bangladesh. It allows users to make audio calls, video calls and send messages while using a low amount of mobile data.

9 1000 taka is approximately 12 US dollars. The legal minimum wage for garment workers in Bangladesh is 8000 taka a month.