Women’s Lives in Transition: A Qualitative Analysis of the Fertility Decline in Bangladesh
Author(s)
Simmons, Ruth
Abstract
In this qualitative analysis of focus-group interviews with women in Matlab concerning perceptions of childbearing and the nature of change within rural society, women’s lives in Bangladesh are shown to be in transition. Multiple dimensions of their lives are being transformed, and, taken together, these changes explain the interest in family-size limitation. The presence of a strong family planning program is a major contributing factor in the fertility transition, but social and economic changes, as well as a new mental outlook, new ideas and orientations, also play important roles. Shifts are subtle and have not affected everyone equally. They do not amount to a major transformation of economic and social structures, nor to the emergence of entirely new patterns of thought and action. But their influence emerges as a pervasive theme in many long conversations held with rural women of different ages in the Matlab communities.The basic argument presented here is similar to the analysis by Caldwell and his colleagues (1988) of demographic change in South India. The increased economic burden of large families, the growing influence of a monetized economy, critical changes in schooling, the penetration of modern urban life into the village, together with the influence of the family planning program, were seen in that analysis as the causes of the onset of the fertility transition. Although Bangladesh had not reached the same level of adult literacy by 1988 as South India had, the parallels are important
