International Journal of Research in Social Sciences

The 1970s marked an era when gender disparity continued to hinder ‘development’ for some of the developing countries of the world (World Bank policy research report, 2001). Development policy planners, eventually, became aware that not all women can access resources, as men are able to, and not everybody's skills and experiences get recognized as ‘knowledge’. To understand women's participation in development, and to discern perceptions of development in terms of women's specialized experiences, it is, therefore, necessary to link together gender, local knowledge and development, in a wider perspective. In this article, I intend to start by describing key terms like ‘gender’ and ‘development’ found in discourses resonating around gender, development and local knowledge. I shall argue, in this article how local understanding of unnoyon (local development) and bhalo thaka (wellbeing) in Char Khankhanapur and Decree Charchandpur, two villages in southwestern Bangladesh varies, significantly, from the western perception of development and wellbeing and explain that local people's perception of their own development and wellbeing depends on people's class, caste, gender, age and social status.