Paper short abstract:

There is still debate about whether employed women can challenge social and gender norms on their way to freedom in developing countries. Applying the capability approach, we explored how employment transforms social and gender norms. The findings revealed that the quota system in jobs for women greatly affects women's well-being implying that women's freedom is deeply rooted in existing norms.

Paper long abstract:

There is still debate about whether employed women can challenge social and gender norms on their way to freedom in developing countries. Applying the capability approach, this study explores how employment transforms social and gender norms. We conducted 35 in-depth interviews and 5 focus group discussions (FGDs) with female schoolteachers at Golapgonj Upazila under Sylhet district. The findings revealed that the quota system in jobs for women greatly affects women's well-being. All the participants have access to family decision-making in a nuclear family compared to a joint family. Social acceptance and respect for school-teaching jobs have enabled participants to freely visit schools to perform their duties. The female schoolteachers’ freedom of public mobility, visiting their father's house, controlling income, and receiving health care also have improved in the majority of cases. Despite that woman still faces unfreedom due to the prevailing patriarchal social and gender norms. Women's personal, social, and political lives are conditioned by these factors, for example, entering into employment, having a baby, property ownership, going alone in public (like visiting the market, meeting colleagues, or visiting doctors), and playing or watching an outdoor game. Internalized norm of oppression is evident from the interviews, for example, women feel secure if they ask for permission from the family’s head to visit outside. They do not ask for the father’s/husband’s property fearing the breakdown of kinships. The study implies that women's freedom is deeply rooted in existing norms that require intervention at multiple levels including personal, family, and community.