The Socio-cultural Perspective of Women’s sexual and reproductive health In Coastal Bangladesh : An Ethnographic Obsevations

Abstract (English)

Socio-cultural understanding of Women’s sexual and reproductive health is one of the complex and often unexplored intersections, particularly in coastal Bangladesh, where predominantly male-dominated patriarchal socio-cultural norms and expectations prevail. Research data shows that males in coastal Bangladesh are increasingly migrating to urban areas, and this push factor of male migration allows women access to limited control over land. Still, it leaves them even more vulnerable in response to their socio-cultural perception of sexual and reproductive well-being. Despite focusing on the traditional vulnerabilities of coastal women’s rhetoric, this research aims to assert that every individual possesses multiple realities and identities that vary across social-cultural dimensions. Therefore, an intersectional approach will be deployed to bridge this gap. An ethnographic approach will be employed to uncover how climate-induced vulnerabilities shape women’s everyday experiences, bodily autonomy, and social resilience by exploring the intersectional lens of saline water, gendered labour, reproductive health, and societal norms. It is evident from several quantitative and mixed-method studies that the impact of saline water and safety issues of women in Shatkhira, Bagerhat and Borguna is a growing concern in environmental and health studies. Ironically, the health sociology of women’s sexuality and reproductivity either remains unobserved or unmapped. The primary reason for the inadequacy of surveys in understanding the socio-cultural construction of sexual and reproductive health is their limited capacity to capture the nuanced, context-specific dynamics of cultural beliefs, gender roles, and local stigma and taboos. These approaches often fail to delve deeply into the subjective experiences and social contexts that shape individuals' sexual and reproductive health perceptions. Though mixed-methods approaches can provide broad patterns of socio-cultural impact on women’s sexual and reproductive health, they exhibit a reduced level of diminished capacity to elicit emotional attachment and effectively capture socio-sexual traumatic experiences, the complexity of socio-cultural power dynamics, religious norms, and context-specific practices that influence sociological sexual health behaviors. In juxtapose, ethnography allows the research team to collect field data from the interlocutors’ everyday negotiations by engaging in their sociocultural and normative settings, thereby offering more affluent, more contextually grounded insights into the lived experiences of coastal women. Nevertheless, exploring the socio-cultural understanding of sexual and reproductive health of coastal women is the core objective of this subproject. And It aims to investigate how the association of health sociology, the impacts of saline water in women’s lived experiences along with the normative surveillance of regulatory sexual and reproductive health discourses are intertwined with power, religion, belief, kinship, context independence, complex household dynamics, reliance on the adaptive normative strategies regarding salty waters and ongoing struggles of ignorance.