Gender Roles At Home And Abroad: The Adaptation Of Bangladeshi Immigrants

Baluja studies the ways gender roles of Bangladeshi immigrants change after migration. Working with Bangladeshis in Queens, New York, and in corresponding source areas in Bangladesh, she finds that immigrant families maintain some traditional attitudes, but abandon others. For example, immigrants stress traditional women’s domestic and childcare responsibilities and husbands’ responsibility for financial support and decision making. Conversely, immigrant women circulate alone in a greater variety of places in New York than do their counterparts in Bangladesh. Traditional behaviors and attitudes are abandoned for practical considerations and a desire to escape cultural constraints. Immigrants’ adaptation process may be individuals choose, according to their needs, aspects of both their origin and destination societies.