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AbstractThis article re‐assesses the effect of microcredit programme participation on women's empowerment by applying an analytical framework that recognizes the conceptual shift in emphasis in the definition of empowerment, from notions of greater well‐being of women to notions of women's choice and active agency in the attainment of greater well‐being. The author finds that microcredit programme participation has only a limited direct effect in increasing women's access to choice‐enhancing resources, but has a much stronger effect in increasing women's ability to exercise agency in intra‐household processes. Consequently, programme participation is able to increase women's welfare and possibly to reduce male bias in welfare outcomes, particularly in poor households.

The general phenomenon that women in Bangladesh engage less frequently in market work than men is commonly explained as the lack of response of female labour to economic imperatives due to the overarching influence of purdah. However, this emphasis on a cultural rationale for gender‐differentiated work behaviour diverts attention away from the deep‐rooted economic inequalities at the societal level. This article examines women's work in urban Bangladesh from a female labour supply and demand perspective that is rooted in the socio‐economic institutional context. The study finds that, despite the strong gender segregation of economic roles, women's roles are more flexible and lend themselves to changing household strategies more easily compared to men's. The evidence indicates that female labour market participation is largely the outcome of the supply effect shaped by the pattern of gender roles and gender‐specific access to human capital. Consequently, women are relegated to low‐skill market activities and have lower earnings than men, even without any overt discrimination in labour demand. The covert discrimination that leads women to pursue a different pattern of labour use than men is the fundamental gender bias of socio‐economic institutions that govern household allocational decisions and dictate gender‐specific behaviour.

Initially, women's status as indicated by the level of formal schooling was seen as an instrument for reducing fertility, and became the focus of research and policy interest in the field of population control. The shift of examining women's status more broadly occured around the early 1980s, both to explicate the education-fertility connection, and also illuminate other aspects of women's lives that influence demographic behaviour. The author takes a look at the shift in the population policy debate globally with brief references to South Asia, Bangladesh and Punjab (India). (DÜI-Sen)

The use of modern contraception in Bangladesh in a fairly widespread manner is a recent phenomenon. The author looks at the socio-demographic and female status predictors of current contraception among a group of women beneficiaries of development programmes on four rural areas of the country. (DÜI-Sen)

The paper aims at tracing out the paths through which women's employment, in the Bangladesh context, could lead to changes in desired family size through its impact on women's states, their lessened economic dependence on men and the value they place on children. (DÜI-Sen)