Design Within a Patriarchal Society: Opportunities and Challenges in Designing for Rural Women in Bangladesh

This paper examines the opportunities and issues that arise in designing technologies to support low-income rural women in Bangladesh. Through a qualitative, empirical study with 90 participants, we reveal systemic everyday challenges that women face that form the backdrop against which technology design could potentially happen. We discuss how technology is already impacting women's lives, sometimes by reinforcing their subservient role in society and sometimes used tactically by women to gain a measure of agency. The issues raised by our participants concerning technology's place in their lives provide HCI researchers with valuable guidance about what might (or might not) be appropriate to design for them. We also show how prevalent HCI research and design strategies may fit more poorly than expected into rural women's lives, and we discuss possible alternative design directions, and the ethical and pragmatic trade-offs that they entail. Our contribution is not to "solve" the problem of designing for low-income rural women, but to expand the HCI community's understanding of technology design within deeply patriarchal societies.