Western feminists, reproductive rights and contraception in Bangladesh

Family planning has been a major preoccupation of development agencies in South Asia for several decades now. However, the way family planning programs have been implemented and are still being aggressively promoted in different parts of South Asia causes problems for, rather than furthering, women's reproductive rights and women's health. The priorities of development agencies reflect Western obsessions with limiting population rather than the actual needs of local women. These issues have been taken up and promoted by local groups such as UBINIO in Bangladesh, as well as by international feminist organizations such as FINRRAGE (Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering), allied to the growing international concern with medical abuse of women's bodies. There are however problems with the strategies of these movements. While their opposition to the forms of contraception which are currently being promoted is entirely justified, they have little to offer in their place. Their mostly educated, middle-class memberships tend to have little empathy with, or understanding of, the situation of village women. In examining the problematic relationships between urban feminist groups in developing countries, Western feminist organizations, and the rural populations whom they seek to aid, this paper hopes to contribute towards a feminist politics more attuned to the reality of rural women in South Asia and similar contexts.