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What are service providers’ perspectives on how they help women access justice services, and do these perspectives reflect different viewpoints on what justice is? How are recent legal and policy reforms impacting service provision and practices, and fostering a more collaborative approach among services? How do multiple intersectional factors affect service provision and women’s access to justice in both countries?

Based on qualitative fieldwork in Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea, in this pre-submission seminar Subrata will present findings that show noteworthy progress in improving women’s access to specialised and district courts, the police, village courts, and victim support services. Women’s access to those services remains limited in rural areas, however, where culture, religion, patriarchy, and community power structures are also influential factors in village court settings. The findings also reveal persistent biases based on class, education, and geography among service providers in rural and urban locations. The study develops a framework for measuring access to justice that incorporates legal protection, accessibility, empowering victims, and support. It argues that feminism and human rights movements have informed legal and institutional reforms in both nations significantly and that the concepts of vernacularisation and intersectionality are useful to illustrate the differences, challenges, and adaptations encountered during policy implementation. Aware of his positionality, being from Bangladesh, Subrata focuses on Bangladesh but explores key themes across the two countries.

Speaker

Subrata Banarjee is a PhD candidate with the Department of Pacific Affairs, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs. Originally from Bangladesh, he has over eight years’ experience teaching criminology at Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University. He has also worked on gender rights, policing, labour, and children’s rights with development organisations and Bangladesh Police, and interned with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna. Subrata holds an MA in Criminology from the University of Ottawa and a prior Bachelor's and Master’s in Criminology and Police Science from Bangladesh. He has authored several publications, and his doctoral research examines the role of service providers in helping women access justice for domestic violence cases in Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea.

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