Women Negotiating Change

Abstract

This article explores the abduction and murder of Kalpana Chakma, Organizing Secretary of the Hill Women’s Federation, a local network addressing issues of gendered violence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The article reflects on Kalpana Chakma’s views of life and struggle, the incident, and its consequences. Analysing the response of the mainstream women’s movement to the event, I foreground contesting notions of violence and victimization upheld by the state and the women’s movement in Bangladesh. Engaging the processes through which ethnic women have been victimized, this article addresses issues of agency and resistance, and the means by which women, as individuals and in movements, negotiate and resist the subject position of ‘victim’.