ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the work/care nexus in Bangladesh through an examination of the tensions that emerge when women are regarded primarily as productive bodies but no attempt is made to recast gender norms in regard to reproductive responsibilities. Moving beyond a conceptualisation of care work as an obstacle to individual economic empowerment, it situates questions of social reproduction and the sexual division of labour within a broadly structural analysis of economic policy and social transformation. Socio-cultural norms continue to reify women as wives and mothers even as government commitment to export-oriented development policies encourages working-class women to engage in paid work. Contradictions between state/civil society rhetoric on gender equality and everyday gendered practices in the public and domestic spheres shape individual women's experience of work and care. The chapter concludes that, while such contradictions affect all Bangladeshi women, the experience of the work and care nexus is fundamentally differentiated by class.
