Thinking out of the ‘Man box’: An intersectional exploration of gender dynamics in northern Bangladesh via gender tracking framework

Placing people on boxes and drawing gender lines based upon the social codes of education tend to result in long-term gender inequality in the global context, and in this regard, Bangladesh is not an exception. Our study is an endeavor to explore how both men and women have socialized themselves with the underlying principles of the ‘Man box’ and how such socialization translates into social infanticide of womenfolk in northern Bangladesh. A wide range of qualitative research tools was employed to collect primary data from two regions of northern Bangladesh. Accordingly, we combined three key concepts ‘Man box’, women's subordination, and intersectionality to capture the gender nuances and degrees as well as to unravel the subsequent repercussions on gender dynamics using an author-modified ‘Gender Tracking Framework’. The study noticed that the social education system in northern Bangladesh is largely shaped and driven by deep-rooted ‘Man box’ codes resulting in high levels of gender disparity concerning property rights, workload, wage rate, control over earnings, decision autonomy, social mobility, market participation, power, agency, and voice against violence. Moreover, the intersectional analysis unveiled the multilayered powerlessness of marginalized groups, stemming from their intersecting identities and exacerbated by governance leakage. Their resulting miseries reached to such an ultimate position that even hope seemed like a luxury to them. The findings suggest that gender equality in Bangladesh can only be attained in its true sense through collective socio-cultural transformation by breaking the ‘Man box’ trap and by familiarizing a social education system in which each individual will be taught to treat others equitably without any form of biases, which we termed as ‘Human box’ ideology.