Alangkar or Ahangkar? Reserved-Seat Women Members in the Bangladesh Parliament

Abstract

This chapter investigates the role of reserved-seat women parliamentarians in Bangladesh—those elected indirectly to the parliament, now numbering 50, using the notions of descriptive representation and substantive representation developed by Pitkin Empirical evidence shows that the ‘quota women ’ are not as docile as people often tend to assume; they have, in fact, fared better than the popularly elected women parliamentarians in performing parliamentary functions. Several factors, however, still discourage them to play a major proactive role. This paper identifies those factors, based on a review of secondary literature as well as in-depth interview with several women MPs and examines the implications for empowering women in parliament

Research for this paper was carried out with funding from a DFID/ESRC Project entitled Parliament, Public Engagement and Poverty Reduction in Bangladesh and Ethiopia administered by School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The authors express their indebtedness to the Principal Investigator of the Project Professor Emma Crewe for her critical comments on the paper and suggestions for its improvement.