Gender Role and Individual Modernity: An Exploratory Study in Microfinance and Gender Role Transformation

	Paper No:29	Author:Habibul Haque Khondker	733 Views	Pages:56

Using the sociological construct of individual modernity, this study explores the impact of microcredit on the attitudes, behaviors, values and aspirations of women in rural and peri-urban Bangladesh. Viewing future-orientation, individualism, equity, tolerance of diversity, rationality, as characteristics of modernity, this study examines trends towards individual modernity. This study combines both qualitative and quantitative methods and largely premised on the assumption of qualitative sociology where the focus of the study is an understanding of the phenomena and not establishing a cause-effect relationship between variables. The study used a household survey of pre-selected samples mostly drawn from rural and some selected periurban households in Bangladesh. Rural Bangladesh has come under the impact of various governmental as well as non-governmental development-intervention programs of which microfinance feature prominently.