Surveilled Girlhoods and the Patriarchal Bargain: The Price of Education for Bangladeshi Women

Abstract

This paper examines the complex intersections of surveillance, patriarchy, and higher education in the lives of Bangladeshi women, theorizing how girlhood and marriage become sites of negotiation within oppressive structures. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s notion of the panopticon and Sandra Bartky’s analysis of gendered discipline, it explores how surveillance of women’s mobility, bodies, and voices is internalized from childhood, producing docile, compliant subjects in the name of familial honor. Yet, for many young women, access to higher education often comes through Deniz Kandiyoti’s concept of the patriarchal bargain: marriage becomes both a condition and a constraint for academic pursuit. While marriage offers a temporary escape from parental control, it reinforces a deeper entrapment—expectations of domestic labor, reproductive coercion, and the “triple burden” of student, wife, and mother. The paper further employs Judith Butler’s theory of performativity to analyze how “good girlhood” is enacted through repetitive acts of obedience across familial and academic spheres. Despite these constraints, women continue to resist through everyday acts of perseverance, education, and intellectual pursuit, revealing how feminist, reproductive, and economic justice remain intertwined. By centering these lived contradictions, the paper highlights the structural costs of women’s education in Bangladesh and reimagines resistance within patriarchal contexts.