FINDING WAYS TO LEARN ABOUT RURAL WOMEN: EXPERIENCES FROM A PILOT PROJECT IN BANGLADESH.

As the result of our involvement in a national project to integrate rural women in the development process in Bangladesh, we have been dependent on accurate information about rural women for formation and modification of policy. However we have been increasingly aware of the amount of misinformation about rural women, the lack of accurate data and the difficulties in collecting it. This paper discusses this misinformation and how best to overcome the difficulties presented by trying to develop programmes for women without adequate information. The paper is divided into five main sections: description of the Project; misinformation about rural women; lack of information about rural women; difficulties in getting information about rural women; using the project to get information about rural women. After a description of the basic approach of the Women's Programme in which we are working, we discuss the pervasive and persistent misinformation about rural women that we have encountered in the course of our work and suggest some of the semantic, societal and economic causes for it. The next section lists some of the basic information about rural women that is not available and suggests some of the reasons for this dearth of information: reticence to discuss women, lack of motivation to collect information about women, lack of conceptualization of women as a subculture acting in its own interest. The fourth section describes the kinds of difficulties researchers encounter in trying to get accurate information about women in a purdah culture. The last section describes the ways we are developing within the project to get the information we need and the problems we are facing in accomplishing our objectives. Although we do not yet have a satisfactory solution, we think we are more likely to be able to solve some of our information problems if we can find ways appropriate to our specific situation, than if we depend only on time-consuming highly academic and sophisticated approaches to research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]