Sultana et al. [1] work with women in low-income families residing in rural Bangladesh. Through qualitative research, they have identified the challenges faced by designers working for this population and have highlighted the scope for interventions and opportunities. The society here is highly religious and patriarchal. The latter has a significant role to play in the lives of the population. They discuss the role of technology in their lives while studying women’s perspective regarding their lives, their freedom and their empowerment. The paper ends with the author’s thoughts regarding the scope and direction of implementation of any solution in this context. They do not aim to solve the problems highlighted but deepen the research community’s understanding.
The paper is proposed to be an intersection between Feminist HCI and HCI4D. It does touch upon aspects of the two, but the qualities of FHCI, as proposed by Bardzell were not discussed.
Vigorous qualitative research was conducted in the form of semi-structured interviews, focus groups and participant observation. The data collection was thorough as the number of participants was eighty and since there were overlaps of participants in the different methods, they got different details in them, considering personal information was shared in interviews and overall community perspective in the focus groups. The research method reflected the participation quality, along with a pluralistic approach. The ecology of the setting is discussed in detail. The data was analysed after coding thematically. While it may be argued that involving more stakeholders in the process would result in better insights but the decision of sticking to women and doing exhaustive research with them was a better decision. The husbands or in-laws may have completely disregarded any growth for women and may have refused to answer questions, or worse, portrayed the women to be happy and contented with the lifestyle they are subjected to.
The paper was a good read and very easy to follow. It does, however, generate a saviour complex for the reader. The research area is very interesting and may have had the authors feel like the women in rural Bangladesh were worth saving from patriarchal reins and it reflects in the writing. Despite the authors mentioning that they didn’t want to look at the women as objects for pity, the portrayal of women in the context makes them sound like helpless being, patiently waiting without fighting for a better day for an angel to come suddenly and magically make their problems disappear. Another malpractice of portrayal can be seen in the lines “We organize our findings according to the experiences of women in different stages of their lives: before they get married when they are under the control of their parents; while they are married and under the control of their husbands and in-laws”. Although the perspective of the women may be that they are living under the control of people throughout their lives, a researcher should either specify that the terminology is emic or use less discriminatory terms. This goes against the quality of Advocacy. Self-disclosure and embodiment haven’t been discussed.
Since Sharifa Sultana was from the area of research itself, she gelled well with the women. It would have been interesting to see how the locals responded to her presence. Was she seen as an insider because of her fluency in the language or an outcast considering that she was an educated woman ailing from an area with a reputation for ill-treating women education?
The solution direction was interesting to read. The discourse done was thorough and the directions suggested did not directly solve the problem, but indirectly help women or their families in physical tasks or even psychologically. To implement these, one may not need to do another study in order to understand the patriarchal structure, but simply study other requirements of people living in these rural areas in other to help these women. This teaches researchers working in sensitive areas to adopt alternative approaches.
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