In Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox, Naila Kabeer starts with the rationale that policy actions taken at the top are unlikely to materialise into actual changes if they are not acted on by the mass of ordinary women and men. But what led these women and men to act? And why did they act in ways that modified some of the more oppressive aspects of patriarchy in the country? That is what this book sets out to investigate.

Naila Kabeer (FAcSS) is Professor of Gender and Development in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and on the faculty of the International Inequalities Institute at LSE. She has carried out several years of interdisciplinary research on gendered inequalities in relation to labour markets, livelihoods, social protection and collective action.