This thesis studies the effects of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on human capital investment and women's empowerment in Bangladesh. Chapter Two studies how the entry of NGOs in primary education has affected educational outcomes of girls and examines the mechanisms which account for the relative performance of NGO versus state schools in improving female educational outcomes. The results show that the entry of NGO schools has significantly increased girls' enrollment as compared to boys. The two most prominent characteristics of NGO schools that encourage girls' enrollment are the high percentage of female teachers and having Parent-Teacher Associations. NGO schools show strong effects in improving children's test scores. Chapter Three analyzes the factors which affect teacher presence, student attendance, and community participation in primary schools in Bangladesh. The results show that, after controlling for other factors, NGO school teachers are more likely to be present in school, NGO schools are associated with higher student attendance rates, and guardians of NGO school students, in particular mothers, are more likely to participate in school meetings. Motivation appears the most important factor explaining teacher presence among NGO school teachers. Teacher attendance rate and other factors relating to curriculum and school facility explain student attendance in NGO schools. Chapter Four investigates the effects of having the Grameen Bank in the village of residence on fertility decisions and women's empowerment. The results suggest that the Grameen Bank affects fertility decisions in the direction towards lower fertility. The changes include a reduction in women's ideal number of children and the number of births in the year prior to the survey, and an increase in husband's approval rate, and actual use, of family planning methods. Having the Grameen Bank in the village shows positive relationship with women's empowerment as measured by contribution to family support and mobility.

This thesis places respectable femininity at the centre of the construction and performance of new womanhood among affluent middle-class women of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Using qualitative research methods, combining audio-visual materials, focus group discussion and multiple in depth interviews, I examine the complex and heterogeneous constructions of new womenhoods in relation to women’s negotiations with public and private sphere roles and Bangladeshi norms of female propriety. My conceptual framework facilitates analysis of the everyday interactional negotiations of new women in relation to their gendered and classed practices of respectable femininity, and the potential for this boundary work to enhance their agency. My analysis illuminates three aspects of the dialogical nature of respectable femininity and new womanhood. First, new women are part of the neoliberal affluent middle class and they construct their class identity as a status group, claiming inter-class and intraclass distinction from other women. Their claims to distinction rest on their levels of higher education, types of paid employment and exposure to transnational lifestyles, alongside their gendered, classed and culturally attuned selfhood performed through their ‘smart’ aesthetic practices, 50-50 work home life balance and female individualism. Secondly, new womanhood is legitimized by alternative and multiple practices of respectability, varying according to women’s age, stage of life, profession, household setting and experience of living in western countries. Finally, as new women forge alternative forms of respectability theirs is not a straightforward abandonment of old structures of respectability; rather they conform to, negotiate and potentially transgress normative conceptions of middle-class respectable femininity, substituting, concealing, or legitimizing particular practices in particular fields. Nonetheless, these processes enable them to practice increased autonomy and agency, and while their gains are vested in the self, rather than a wider feminist politics, they have the potential to positively influence the terrain of possibilities for other Bangladeshi women. Overall, my thesis shifts the focus of respectability research in South Asia from exploring the binary of respectable and unrespectable practices to evaluating how women make and remake their respectable status and class privilege in neoliberal Bangladesh, and the implications for gender relations.