Submitted to-

Dr Kazi Maruful Islam

Faculty
BRAC Development Institute
MDS Program

The role of women in

Chakma communities in
Bangladesh

Submitted by-

Mohammad Boby Sabur

ID no. 09262005
MDS Program
BRAC Development Institute
BRAC University
The role of women in Chakma communities in Bangladesh

Introduction
In 1900 the then ruling British authority enacted a regulation called the Chittagong Hill
Tracts to bring the land under their rule which includes three administrative thanas 1 -
Chittagong, Rangamati and Khagrachari. In that regulation they first termed the natives
of the hills to be ‘Indiginious hillman’. They also termed the different groups of people
living in the area as ‘tribes’. Today, there are as many as eleven different tribes-
1. Chakma, 2. Marma, 3. Tripura, 4. Tanchangya, 5. Mro (Murong), 6. Bom,
7. Pankhua, 8. Lusei (Lusai), 9. Chaak, 10. Khiyang, and the last one 11. Khumi. 2

It is a widely accepted fact that in the field of development the people in Bangladesh,
even today, have very little knowledge about the ‘indiginious’ or ‘ethnic’ communities.
The amount of works that has been carried out on the ‘ethnic minorities’ is small and the
few books have been published lack diversity in their subject line. They describe the
different parts of lives of women in the tribal communities trying to make the
representation through a comparison that women in ethnic communities are more active
and take active role in the daily activities in comparison with the Bengali-mainstream
women. So, it is time that we started taking things seriously and carried out more
studies on them, their ways of lives, culture and heritage. This will enable us a deeper
understanding of their lives and we will be able to design development programs and
implement them effectively.

Background and Context

The main focus of the study will be to emphasize the ‘agency’ of chakma women. All
women in the chakma community, and in other ‘tribes’, take active part in their social,
cultural, and economic lives. In their social lives they are loving mothers, good wives,
and supportive daughters. In their cultural lives, women sing, dance, they make
dochoyani 3 and play the key role. In their economic lives, the chakma women take
active role sometimes even surpassing the men. They are key players in all three major
economic activities – production (jhoom cultivation), processing, and even marketing the

1
Thana: administrative unit
2
Ref. Parbottyo Chottogramer Upojati by Sugata Chakma; Research and Publication Wing, Tribal Curtural Institute,
Rangamati
3
Dochoyani: local type of liquor which is a must in greeting people in social gatherings

1
produce. However, the body of literature have always tried to portray women from a
typical point of view. Even in the literature that concentrate on the nationalist movement
of the ‘tribes’ have tried to ‘iconize’ women and seen them as dependent of the ‘male’.
Two proximate reasons behind this observation could be –
1. The writers themselves were internalized in a patriarchal system and could not
come out of their ‘male bias’. So, when they approached women in the hills, they
saw the hill women to be filing in the secondary foil for the men. Historical
journals are good examples of this.
2. Then, there is the politics of representation. The ‘nationalist movement’ itself is a
case where we see serious gender bias towards ‘patriarchy’ keeping a typical
approach about women. There are writings concentrating on the use of
ornaments by adivasi women but no work to analyze the significance of women
in their daily activities. There has been no mention of their ‘agency’.
These typifications do not allow us to come out of our eternal windows through which to
look at chakma women and evaluate their representation in society.

Analysis of the research problem

Till date women in chakma community, and other communities in general, has been
viewed as the mechanism of carry out certain reproductive activities which comes to
help whenever there is a need to share workload. However, the real scenario is
completely different. Chakma women are more productive than the chakma men and
engage in active participation in all respects of their lives – both reproductive and
productive. They engage not only in the production phase but processing and even
marketing the produces. One of the targets of the research is to throw more light on the
issue and bring out the ‘agency’ role in women and try to point out the problems that
play as proximate reasons behind this issue. This new understanding, the researcher
believes, will instill a new significance not only to the women in chakma community, but
women all over the globe.

Objective of the research

General - To look into the issues relating with adivasi women and the proximate
reasons behind a lack of ‘agency’ argument in their favour as the existing body of
literature seem to have failed to portray women in their appropriate colours.

2
Specific - To educate the people in country on the roles and responsibilities of the
chakma women as mainstream people have very little knowledge about the ethnic
people and their lives. And more that the roles of chakma women emphasizing their
‘agency’ rather than describing different activities as disjointed parts.

Research Questions/ Hypothesis

1. What do we understand by ‘roles’? Does ‘roles’ comprise of within the household
activities or does it take into consideration outside-household activities as well?
2. What are the types of activities that ethnic women, especially chakma women, in
Bangladesh engage in today?
3. What are the reasons behind a typical portrayal of women even in societies
where women, it seems, are engaged in more activities than men?
4. How a new approach in this issue will help our cause of development?

Theoretical/Analytical Framework
The approach towards the research problem will be based on Feminist framework.
Other theoretical stances may evaluate the whole issue from different perspectives, for
example, the Marxist-Feminist approach will help to analyse the chakma women’s
achievements and their role purely from an economic background. However, my
intention is to throw light on the issue of women as ‘agents’ and their role in the
community. How women, in terms of both chakma community of Bangladesh and
women in general, are deliberately kept off from their claim of agency. The Feminists
criticize the existing theories calling them ‘male biased’ as the theories look to
marginalize the role of women and their contribution. The target of the study is not to
focus on ‘exploitation’ but on the issue of ‘agency’ of women in chakma community. The
study, thus, is an effort to create an awareness among people and try and look at
women not as dependent of men rather as independent agents.

Review of the literature

Absolutely no literature has been found in the connection of our concerned topic –
neither over internet, nor in the central libraries and archives. In fact, researching
through a good number of books on the ethnic communities of Bangladesh and talking
with relevant expertise in the field, it became apparent that though the volume of works
done on issues related to the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), the people, their lives,
culture, heritage, lifestyle, even on the ornaments used by adivasi 4 wome are not
4
Adivasi – the people of ethnic minorities are called adivasis.

3
insignificant, works and studies to reflect on the ‘agency’ of adivasi women or more
specifically on chakma women lack in numbers. The purpose of this study is to
determine the reasons behind this lack of awareness towards investing to bring about
the multi-faceted roles women play in a society, both within and outside household
boundaries, emphasizing especially on the role they play as agents.

Methodology
Both Qualititative and Quantitative approaches will be used in conducting the study
employing anthropological perspective. Qualititative approach will be the main approach
while group observation and Quantitative approach will be adopted. For data collection,
ethnographic techniques will be applied – participant observation, group discussion and
interviews. Participant observation will provide the researcher with opportunity to
observe women engaging in different activities giving a full range of activities an adivasi
women goes through on a regular basis. There will be unstructured and semi-structured
interviews designed to collect more ground level data. The researcher will also take part
in the weekly meetings of different NGOs working with the ethnic communities and
observe the level of communication the women makes with the beneficiaries. This will
give the researcher more insight into the matter.

Philosophical position for and logic of choosing a particular type of research

design
Qualitative research approach will enable the researcher to collect and process data
through observation. Whereas, Quantitative approach will enable the researcher to
collect data through unstructured and semi structured interviews. Data collected thus
will be processed with Microsoft Excel software.

Unit of Analysis
In the study there will be two units of analyses-
 Women in within-household activities
 Women in outside household activities

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Key Variables and their relations
Following table showing Independent variables and their indicators –

Independent variables Indicators

Education Level of education
Social and life skills Participation in community action (para 5 based)
Following table showing dependent variables and their indicators -

Dependent variables Indicators

Engagement in productive role Frequency of engagements, Amount of output
Engagement in reproductive role Frequency of engagements
Empowerment in decision making Number of incidences

Data Collection Procedure

For interviews, a semi structured and at times unstructured technique will be followed.
Questions in the questionnaire will mostly be close-ended questions and basically
based on a check list of issues to be covered in interviews.

Population, sample and participants

For interview, informants will be chosen from women of different livelihood, for example,
jhum cultivation, fabric and fabric-produces making, marketing etc. to ensure objectivity
of data. The researcher will need the following types of informants -

3 chakma women engaged in jhum cultivation

3 chakma women engaged in fabric and fabric-produces
3 chakma women engaged in marketing the produces
3 chakma women engaged in tourist business

5
Paara: the small village areas that are constituted by particular ethnic communities

5
3 chakma men engaged in the above mentioned types of livelihood

A total of twelve chakma women will be chosen from different livelihood backgrounds so
the sampling is objective.
The researcher intendeds to take part in a couple of group discussions conducted by
NGOs working with the ethnic people in CHT. Through observing these meetings, the
researcher will be able to determine the level to which women represent their ‘agency’.

Data collection instruments

Data will mostly be collected through observation and interviewing. Interviews will
mostly be unstructured or semi-structured with close-ended questions.

Data analysis procedure

The responses to the structured close-ended questions will be rated in percentages.
The data collected will be analysed using Microsoft Office Excel software as the
researcher does not have expertise over popular data analyzing software packages as
SPSS, STATA, JMP etc.

Anticipated ethical issues in the study

During the research, following issues will be taken into consideration and sensitive
information will be handled in a conservative manner-

1. The informants will be given a clear idea about the study and its nature
2. Caution will be adopted so as to avoid Fabrication and falsification of data
3. Great care will be taken to ensure Non-publication of sensitive data
4. Necessary measures will be taken so Faulty data-gathering procedures don’t hurt
process of the study
5. Collected data will be preserved with caution and made sure that no poor data
storage and retention takes place
6. Misleading authorship will be avoided
7. Sneaky publication practices will never be practiced

Anticipated challenges
The researcher has couple of challenges –

6
 1. The researcher, being a ‘male’, carry serious possibility of looking at things and
analyzing them from a ‘male biased’ point of view.
2. The researcher’s task, being a ‘male’, becomes far more difficult to, first of all,
enter the society and, then, have conversation with women.
3. Not knowing the local language of the community may have serious
consequences making him an ‘outsider’.
4. The research cannot be conducted on the regions of CHT as widespread violent
clashes in all of Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban has made physical
visits to the region a virtual impossibility. So, the basis for the research will mainly
be through secondary sources, for example, previous researches and studies
conducted on the issue.
5. However, on searching over the internet, in various libraries (ex. Dhaka university
central library, seminar library of Dept. of Anthropology, University of Dhaka;
Jahangirnagar University, Institute of Development Studies etc.) there has been
found no direct research works or studies which could work as the primary
source and basis for this particular study. As a result, most of the findings of the
research needed to be based on first hand information. The researcher is grateful
to the chair of Dept. of Anthropology, Jahangirnagar University, Professor Dr.
Ainoon Naher and two of the students in Jahangirnagar University, Mr Samujjal
Chakma and Mr Amit Chakma, in this regard.
6. Since both the first hand informants are male, there is a serious risk of them
being internalized with the system in chakma community and, as a result, failing
to analyse critically the chakma way of treating women in that particular
community.
7. Due to a shortage in resources, the researcher will not be able to compare the
outcomes with other studies and thus the study might be seriously biased.

Time frame
The researcher needs to carry out the piece of research within a short period of time as
tension in the CHT region can escalate at any point. The projected time frame for the
research has been decided as eight months where basic framework for the research will
be done in the first three months which includes – drafting literature review, delegating
the research strategy and methodological framework. Developing questionnaire,
reviewing the questionnaire and finalising will be done in another one month. Two
months will be employed for rapport building and data collection. Then, the last two

7
months will be engaged in data analysis, drafting the final report and finalising the
research report for dissemination.

Bibliography

1. Women’s Security Paper: A Comparative Study on Vulnerability and Coping

Mechanisms between Rohingya Refugee and Chakma IDP Women; Rashid,
Syeda Rozana, Bangladesh Freedom Foundation, October 2005

2. Adibashi Maye; Drong, Sanjib, 2004

3. Parbottyo Chottogramer Upojati, Chakma, Sugata; Research and Publication

Wing, Tribal Cultural Institute, Rangamati, 2009

4. Gender, Religion and Development in Rural Bangladesh : PhD Dissertation,

Ainoon Naher

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 Table of contents

Introduction............................................................................................ pg 1
Background and Context...................................................................... pg 1
Analysis of the research problem.......................................................... pg 2
Objective of the research...................................................................... pg 2
Research Questions/ Hypothesis ......................................................... pg 3
Theoretical/Analytical Framework......................................................... pg 3
Review of the literature......................................................................... pg 3
Methodology.......................................................................................... pg 4
Philosophical position for and logic of choosing a
particular type of research design ............................. pg 4

Unit of Analysis ......................................................... pg 4

Key Variables and their relations .............................. pg 4
Data Collection Procedure......................................... pg 5
Population, sample and participants pg 5
Data collection instruments.............. pg 6
Data analysis procedure.................. pg 6
Anticipated ethical issues in the study ................................................. pg 6
Anticipated challenges ......................................................................... pg 6
Time frame ........................................................................................... pg 7
Bibliography ......................................................................................... pg 8