Women in Climate-Smart Agriculture: Gendered Power Dynamics, Resource Ownership, and Intersectional Challenges in the Chars of Northern Bangladesh

This study investigates the participation of women in Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) projects in the char regions of Northern Bangladesh, with a focus on gender-power dynamics, resource ownership, and intersectional identities. CSA offers a transformative approach to enhance agricultural productivity, resilience, and sustainability. However, the adoption of CSA practices among the female farmers in Bangladesh remains limited, particularly in marginalised regions like the chars. Women are crucial contributors to agricultural production in South Asia, yet often face restricted access to resources, limited decision-making power, and exclusion from development opportunities. These challenges are further compounded by intersecting identities related to class, caste, and social status, which amplify barriers to equitable participation. While existing studies of CSA programs have explored gender dynamics in agricultural adaptation, few have adopted feminist political ecology or intersectional lenses to critically analyse the structural and systemic issues shaping women’s experiences.

This research aims to fill this critical gap by examining the role of gender and intersectionality in CSA adoption. Drawing from feminist political ecology, it asks how power dynamics, resource access, and cultural norms affect women’s participation in and benefit from CSA initiatives. It will also explore how CSA project actors frame development problems, translate that framing into policies and interventions and implement CSA programs in chars in Bangladesh. By centring on marginalised farmers, particularly female farmers, this study seeks to uncover actionable insights for designing gender-transformative CSA interventions that address the unique socio-economic and ecological challenges of the chars.

Bio:

Zarin Yesmin Chaity is a PhD candidate at the Crawford School of Public Policy, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Development Studies at Begum Rokeya University, Bangladesh. With over a decade of research and teaching experience, her work focuses on gender and climate change, particularly in climate-vulnerable char (river island) areas. Zarin holds a Master’s degree in Climate Change from the ANU (2019-2020). Her Master’s thesis, Seeing the River Through Women's Eyes, (Supervisor- Associate Professor Dr. Keith Barney) was awarded Best Research Paper by the ANU Gender Institute in 2020.