Farmers' Education in Rural Bangladesh: Neoliberal Ideas of Diversity in the Global South

• In Event: Difference and Dissidence: Im(Possibilities) Within the Neoliberal and Imperial Educational Complex

Abstract

Purpose: This paper focuses on how institutionalized public education programs in the Global North often reinforce inequalities among marginalized groups in the Global South, especially women. The guiding research question is how do institutionalized ideals and logics of neoliberalism, particularly with access to global “diversity,” transact with farmer education for women in the context of a developing country?

Perspectives: According to Vandana Shiva, the World Bank intervenes to promise better welfare and wealth by supporting the Global South’s economic and agricultural venues (Shiva 2002). However, the Global North reduces diversity among “real farmers” and techniques in order to profit off of Global South laborers. Women, in particular, from the Global South have struggled to find their space as “real farmers” in these public education spheres. About 40% of agricultural labor force in Bangladesh is comprised of women and it was recorded that their participation increased by over 100% between the years of 1999-2006 (Burham 2014). Recent evidence show that mostly marginalized and landless households had more women participating in agriculture (FAO 2014; Srabonia, Malapit, Quisumbing & Ahmeda 2014).

In this study, the researcher sheds light on one such challenge: the contrast between institutionalized preferences for diversity and inclusion of female farmers on public documents and their marginalization at the projects sites of a farmer education program. Building on a case study of a farmer education program titled Integrated Agricultural Productivity project, implemented by the Government of Bangladesh and the World Bank, this study unveils how neoliberal politics of diversity in economic development in the Global South mainly give access to designated groups of people “to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit” (McChesney 1998: 7).

Methods: The study combines data collected through two surveys, observations and interviews using visual ethnographic methods for examining the outcome of the farmer education program for women.

Sources: The data comes from a 11 month long mixed method study at Rangpur in northern Bangladesh and interactions with the staff at various local and international organizations involved in this project.

Findings: The results show that male farmers in the farmer education program performed significantly better with regard to productivity and application of innovative methods compared to women farmers. The reasons for the disparate outcomes between male and female farmers are due to inherent socio-cultural and economic biases in societies, which are at times overlooked and often enhanced by the public education programs.

Significance: This work will advance institutional practices in funding international public education projects that marginalize women and other disadvantaged groups in selected roles hindering women's economic empowerment. Also, this work builds on transnational scholarship about the Global North’s assimilative diversity politics predicated on colonial histories and orders.

Author

• Fatima Tuz Zahra, University of Pennsylvania