Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh

Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh provides comprehensive ethnographic accounts that depict the daily life experiences and health hardships encountered by young women and their families living in the slums of Dhaka city and the injustices they face. The analysis focuses on two specific historical eras: 2002-2003 and 2020-2022 and shows that despite recent improvements in employment opportunities and greater mobility for young women, their lives reflect ongoing challenges reminiscent of those faced two decades earlier. While national and global organizations acknowledge the nation's economic and social progress, those on the outskirts of society continue to grapple with enduring poverty. They are excluded from the advantages of economic growth, oppressed by unjust local, national, and global systems, discriminatory laws, and policies. Their struggles go unnoticed as they confront a slew of challenges, including slum evictions, enforced lockdowns, income losses, food insecurity, and ongoing crises related to health, injuries, fatalities, and exploitation and harassment by law enforcement and influential individuals within the slum and the city. After two decades, these obstacles persist, and life remains tenuous, with health severely compromised. This book will appeal to students, academics, and researchers in the fields of Public Health, Medical Anthropology, Gender Studies, Urban Studies, Development Studies, Social Sciences, as well as professionals engaged in urban health and poverty-related work.

Sabina Faiz Rashid is Professor and Mushtaque Chowdhury Chair in Health and Poverty of BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Bangladesh, The position was endowed by the founder of BRAC, the Late Sir Fazle Hasan Abed. She was former Dean of BRAC School (2013-2023). Her research and teaching focuses on urban informal settlement communities, adolescents, and marginalised groups, including refugee populations and sexual minorities in Bangladesh.

Chapter 1: The Tyranny of Poverty & Health; Chapter 2: Tyranny of Everyday Life for Young women and their families in Slums; Chapter 3: Life on the Margins; Chapter 4: Social Position, Relationships & Strategies to Survive in 2002; Chapter 5: Relationships, Networks & Survival during Covid 19, 2020 and After; Chapter 6: Police, Gang fights & Insecurity in 2002; Chapter 7: 2020 to 2022: Arrests, Cycle of Resistance & Discrimination; Chapter 8: Battered Bodies, Minds and Hearts in 2002; Chapter 9: Health is a battlefield: 2020-2022; Chapter 10: Displaced Lives: Eviction and Instability in 2002; Chapter 11: What lies ahead in 2022? Chapter 12: Dead End