ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the intersection of development policies and son preference through the story of a son-less family in Matlab, Bangladesh. Based on the qualitative research on changes in daughters' situation and status amid economic and demographic shifts, it presents a case study of one family to illustrate how economic development, gender hierarchies, and labor migration intersect at the micro level. The young women who migrated for employment in export-oriented manufacturing were often daughters who needed to contribute to household finances due to family hardship or landlessness. Using Kandiyoti's concept of the patriarchal bargain, the chapter demonstrates how bargains are not only made by individual women navigating patriarchal systems, but that the patriarchal bargain also occurs at the family level, with ongoing consequences for household members, including fathers. Many class- and status-based negotiations of gender structures can be understood in terms of "patriarchal bargains" wherein women make strategic decisions within the structural constraints of patriarchal systems.
