Bangladesh Blog #1 Nutrition-Sensitive Extension & Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh by Katy Mulligan

Last year I worked for the USAID funded project, Integrating Gender and Nutrition into Agricultural Extension Services (INGENAES, http://ingenaes.illinois.edu/) at the International Programs Office at the University of California, Davis. The aim of this project is to improve women’s access to agricultural extension services and human nutritional information by working directly with stakeholders in the Feed the Future countries where it operates.

To better understand what the needs of Bangladeshi farmers are and what obstacles they face, I spent three weeks in Bangladesh meeting with and interviewing various farmers, Information Communication Technology organizations, and NGOs. These on the ground experiences and in depth conversations are the first steps to creating gender-sensitive approaches to assessing the efficacy of and improving agricultural technologies.

Bangladeshi farmers, extension agents, and organizations use Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as radio, telephone, and the Internet, to communicate information that people in rural areas might not have access to otherwise. Despite the prevalence of phones in Bangladesh, some women do not have access to the same types of information that men have access to. This information gap is created because of patriarchal norms in Bangladeshi society that prohibits or discourages some women from leaving the home, limits or denies their access to use of a phone, and a lack of ICTs that can accommodate low literacy levels.

By improving women’s access to ICTs and the interface of ICTs, they will be able to access agricultural and nutritional information, elevate their agency, and communicate with the world outside of their homes. Luckily, there are organizations such as, Bangladesh Institute of ICT in Development (BIID), Helen Keller International (HKI), mPower, DNet, and Amadeyr Cloud, Ltd (ACL) that have created ICTs and are interested in integrating gender into their designs and practices if it is not already included.  

After making connections with organizations in Bangladesh, I was off to visit. Bangladesh is the farthest place away from the United States I have traveled. I flew from Sacramento to Los Angeles to Japan to Thailand and then finally, to Dhaka, Bangladesh. When you arrive after such a journey of a total flying time of 35 hours, you do not feel like a real person anymore. Luckily, when I arrived to Dhaka, the taxi driver was waiting for me and I began to realize the disorder that is Bangladesh traffic. I had never experienced anything like this in my life. The people of Bangladesh travel in every mode of transportation imaginable. In the road there are: rickshaws, auto rickshaws, people, goats, buses, cars, bicycles, and motorcycles.