Abstract
This article provides a description of the survival strategies of very poor women in Bangladesh, including networking, buying and selling goods, preparing foods for sale, bartering, selling their own and their children's labour, fishing and gathering food and fuel, and money lending. Katona-Apte stresses that programmes can build on successful coping strategies and provides examples of how this might work, including extending women credit for income-generating schemes. Like Rogers and Youssef, she mentions the experience of the Grameen Bank in lending to poor women to demonstrate that they are good credit risks.
The article outlines the cultural and economic reasons why so many women are destitute in Bangladesh. It also describes the disproportionate and oppressive social burden they carry in their patriarchal society.