Browsing by Author "Hossain, Naomi"

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Engaging elite support for the poorest? BRAC's experience with the ultra poor programme (TUP working paper -3)
(BRAC, 2004-09) Hossain, Naomi; Matin, Imran
This paper describes and draws lessons from the experience of engaging village elite in support of the ultra poor through the Gram Shahayak Committees (GSC), as part of BRAC's CFPR/TUP programme. The paper addresses the following questions: under what conditions can elite become engaged in support of interventions for the ultra poor? What are the risks and benefits of engaging elite in antipoverty programmes? After describing the origins and motivations behind BRAC's Specially Targeted Ultra Poor (TUP) programme, the paper goes on to explain how an important lesson from the programme as it evolved included the need for on-site, village-based protection and support for TUP participants and their newly-acquired assets. The paper goes on to explore some of the early impacts of the GSCs which were formed to fill this need, and to assess the motivations and factors underlying their effectiveness and success. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the lessons from the experience, including their implications for assumptions that dominate scholarship and programmes relating· to the rural politics of poverty in Bangladesh.
Engaging elite support for the poorest? BRAC`s experience with the ultra-poor program
(Taylor and Francis, 2007-11-22) Hossain, Naomi; Matin, Imran
This article draws preliminary lessons from the experience of engaging village elites in support of a BRAC programme for ultra-poor women in rural Bangladesh. It describes the origins, aims, and operation of this programme, which provides comprehensive livelihood support and productive assets to the extreme poor. Based on field research in the rural north-west, the article examines the conditions under which elites can support interventions for the ultra-poor, and the risks and benefits of such engagement. It describes the impact of committees mandated to support ultra-poor programme participants, and attempts to understand the somewhat paradoxical success of this intervention. Conclusions and lessons from the experience involve revisiting assumptions that dominate scholarship and programmes relating to the politics of poverty in rural Bangladesh.
"How can It be a problem if you need them both?" Women juggling paid and unpaid care work in Tanzania
(Institute of Development Studies, 2017-09) Zambelli, Elena; Roelen, Keetie; Hossain, Naomi; Chopra, Deepta; Musoke, Jenipher Twebaze
The paper summarizes the findings of a mixed-method research that was carried out in Tanzania as part of the "Balancing Unpaid Care Work and Paid Work: Successes, Challenges and Lessons for Women’s Economic Empowerment Programs and Policies" research project (2015–17). It reflects the voices and experiences of women and their household members participating in Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) programs across four sites in the rural districts of Korogwe and Lushoto in Tanga region. Participants in two WEE programs are represented, namely the state-run Women Development Fund (WDF) and Oxfam’s Food Security for Tanzanian Farmers program. The question addressed by the research was: How can Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) policies and programs take unpaid care work into account in order to enable Women’s Economic Empowerment to be optimized, shared across families and sustained across generations? This study and its findings clearly indicate that women shoulder the majority of unpaid work and struggle to balance this with paid work responsibilities. While some tasks are shared with other household members, there is no evidence to suggest that women are in a position to redistribute unpaid care work responsibilities to the state, the market or the community. Reasons for this appear to be mainly grounded in gender norms, the lack of public provision of services that are essential for facilitating care as well as paid work, and the low returns on women’s (and men’s) paid work. This study highlights that if no explicit action is undertaken to support a re-balance—whether that is through addressing working conditions, childcare arrangements, social norms, values or otherwise—patterns of unbalance will reproduce and perpetuate themselves, offering women valuable economic opportunities that help to improve living conditions and possibly their position within household or community settings, but never stretching quite far enough to reduce drudgery and the physical and psychosocial stress of juggling too many responsibilities.
National discourses on women's empowerment in Bangladesh: continuities and change
(BRAC University, 2011-07) Hossain, Naomi; Nazneen, Sohela; Sultan, Maheen
As Bangladesh turns 40, improvements in women’s wellbeing and increased agency are claimed to be some of the most significant gains in the postindependence era. Various economic and social development indicators show that in the last 20 years, Bangladesh, a poor, Muslim‐majority country in the classic patriarchal belt, has made substantial progress in increasing women’s access to education and healthcare (including increasing life‐expectancy), and in improving women’s participation in the labour force. The actors implementing such programmes and policies and claiming to promote women’s empowerment are numerous, and they occupy a significant position within national political traditions and development discourses. In the 1970s and 1980s development ideas around women’s empowerment in Bangladesh were influenced by an overtly instrumentalist logic within the international donor sphere. This led to the women’s empowerment agenda being perceived as a donor driven project, which overlooks how domestic actors such as political parties, women’s organizations and national NGOs have influenced thinking and action around it. This paper explores how these perceptions and narratives around women’s empowerment have evolved in Bangladesh from 2000 to date. It studies the concepts of women’s empowerment in public discourse and reviews the meanings and uses of the term by selected women’s organizations, donor agencies, political parties and development NGOs. By reviewing the publicly available documents of these organizations, the paper analyses the multiple discourses on women’s empowerment, showing the different concepts associated with it and how notions such as power, domains and processes of empowerment are understood by these actors. It also highlights how these different discourses have influenced each other and where they have diverged, with an emphasis on what these divergences mean in terms of advancing women’s interests in Bangladesh.
Popular expectations of government: Findings from three areas in Bangladesh
(Programme for Research on Chronic Poverty in Bangladesh (PRCPB), 2006-02) Ali, Tariq; Hossain, Naomi
This paper presents findings from research into expectations from the government, based on focus group discussion sessions with over 100 poor and very poor people in rural and urban Bangladesh. The research was designed to help improve our understanding of the political constraints shaping public policy with respect to poverty. The main research findings include that government was widely perceived as positive for the poor, and there was an unexpectedly clear understanding of the structure and operations of government, and of the mechanisms of political process and change. Findings of sources of information about government and politics highlight the continuing significance of community ‘brokers’, while also confirming the overpowering role of the public television in shaping perceptions of government. There seems to be considerable faith in the capacity of the poor to influence the government, and of the government to respond to the needs of the poor. Despite a generally positive appraisal of the role of government, the poor public is attuned to and critical of the actions of government which affect them directly. In their role as chief guarantors of the welfare of the poor, then the government fails when it fails to control the prices of essential goods. Respondents tended to find it difficult to prioritize between different issues and supported more governmental action in most areas. There was a reasonably clear sense of what made government legitimate, as well of the conditions under which different types of political protest are acceptable. The paper concludes that there is a high degree of awareness and involvement among the poor with respect to political matters.
Poverty reduction and MDG localization: a case study of the IGVGD Programme in Bangladesh
(BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2007) Hossain, Naomi; Zahra, Nahleen
Problems of the women headed households
(BRAC-ICDDR,B Joint Research Project, 1995) Hossain, Naomi; Huda, Samiha
Problems of women-headed households[book]
(Dhaka:BRAC-ICDDR,B Joint Research Project, 1995. 57 p., 1995) Hossain, Naomi; Huda, Samiha
The incentives and constraints of government doctors in primary healthcare facilities in Bangladesh
(BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2008-11) Hossain, Naomi; Rashid-uz-Zaman; Banksand, Nicola; Geirbo, Hanne Cecilie
The moral and political economy of the pandemic in Bangladesh: Weak states and strong societies during COVID-19
(Elsevier, 2021-01) Ali, Tariq Omar; Hassan, Mirza; Hossain, Naomi
As the Covid-19 pandemic spread in 2020, the government of Bangladesh ordered a lockdown and promised a program of relief. Citizens complied at first, but soon returned to economic and social life; relief proved slow and uncertain, and citizens could not rely on government assistance. The government tacitly and then officially permitted the lockdown to end, despite a rising Covid-19 caseload. This article draws on theories about state capacity to make and enforce policy to understand why Bangladesh proved unable to sustain a lockdown deemed necessary to contain the pandemic in this densely populated, low income country. Drawing on original qualitative mobile phone-based research in six selected communities, this article examines how the state exercised its capacities for coercion, control over lower factions within political society, and sought to preserve and enhance its legitimacy. It concludes that despite a) the growth in the capacity of the Bangladeshi state in the past decade and b) strong political incentives to manage the pandemic without harm to economic wellbeing, the pressures to sustain legitimacy with the masses forced the state and its frontline actors to tolerate lockdown rule-breaking, conceding that the immediate livelihood needs of the poor masses overrode national public health concerns. Chronically unable to enforce its authority over local political elites, the state failed to ensure a fair and timely distribution of relief. The weakness of the Bangladeshi state contrasts with the strength of widely shared ‘moral economy’ views within society, which provided powerful ethical and political justification for citizens’ failures to comply with the lockdown, and for officials’ forbearance in its enforcement. The Covid-19 pandemic highlights both the importance of state capacity in managing novel shocks from within the global system, and the challenges in settings where weak states are embedded in strong societies.