Bodies as Sites of Struggle: Naripokkho and the Movement for Women's Rights in Bangladesh (pp. 47-65)

This paper deals with the experiences of Naripokkho, a women's organization that seeks to carve out an autonomous space for feminist politics in Bangladesh that is neither driven by the women and development agenda nor subsumed within a male-dominated party politics. This has allowed the organization to bring onto the public agenda various new, often controversial, issues that emerge out of the organization's commitment to link the personal experiences of women to a political analysis of their subordination. One of the issues, one that constitutes a continuous and central thread in its activism is related to women's bodies as a site of oppression. This paper will deal with the reasons this politics emerged and the form it has taken.