Power Distance, Women and Political Participation in Bangladesh: Union Parishad Perspective

This paper tries to analyze the situation of women’s political participation with respect to power distance orientation from the Union parishad perspective which is considered as the most popular democratic local government institution at the grassroots level in Bangladesh. The deep-rooted social realities of women’s subordination and dependence on male counterparts and the acceptance of women members that power will be unequally distributed between male and female members is found to be the main catalyst for the invisibility of women in public space and political arena. The current study has made deliberate attempts to assess the extent of power distance orientation among the women members (reserved seats) of union parishads of Bangladesh and to explore the impact of power distance orientation of women on decision making process and mainstream activities of Union Parishad. This study is qualitative research though some mechanisms of quantitative methods have been employed in limited form to easily analyze the data. Total 21 women (reserved seat) members of nine Union parishads of Southern Bangladesh have been selected as respondents.