In a massive effort of synthesis, Naila pulls together 50 years of her own scholarship, accompanying the development of her home country since independence in 1971, through famine, upheaval, the emergence of a world-leading garment industry and, within all that, an extraordinary transformation in the lives of its women.
A major driving force behind the Bangladesh paradox was the desire of mothers to give their daughters a better chance in life than the one that society had prescribed for them
Women’s unpaid labour continues to be taken for granted, even as policy makers try to persuade them to increase their labour market participation in the interests of economic growth
“We are finally hearing people questioning the growth paradigm that has dominated our lives, our politics, our vision of the future. If growth is not contributing to the sum total of our wellbeing, to our sense of fairness, to our safety in the streets, to having a secure home; if ‘growth’ is instead only benefitting a privileged few and damaging our environment, what’s the point of it? Why are people working so hard for so little in return? I believe these are questions that at the heart of a movement away from the cult of growth and hopefully towards a wellbeing economy – but for us to get there, we are going to need to recapture politics and power to reshape our future
