The Critical Path-Adjusted Clock Analysis to Measure Relative Gender Bias: An Intertemporal Study of Rural Development Programs in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper attempts to make an intertemporal analysis, given the national clocks of males and females of 1985, between 1998, and 2022 to find out the time spent in various activities by men and women in some villages of Bangladesh and then compare them in Bangladesh. This study uses the classical clock analysis with Critical Path adjustments. Based on these "Critical Path" adjusted clock analysis, the paper tries to identify whether there is any improvement in "relative gender bias" as opposed to "absolute gender bias" in various government and non-government rural development efforts (in terms of poverty reduction, improvement in education, and other interventions to improve the lives of rural people) in Bangladesh. An intertemporal comparison between 1985 and 1998 has already been made by Alam (1999). This study only updates that comparison up to 2022 with some new interpretations. The present research ignores the "quality of time spent around the clock." Because it is unlikely that the quality of time spent by one gender will be identical to another gender in a given sociocultural context. It has also ignored the "Relationship Bias" to maintain consistency with the national clocks. One of the two primary findings of this study is that the time spent by both men and women in income-generating activities has increased, and despite their living standards have also improved over time, perhaps partly due to rural development undertakings of the government and the NGOs and the availability of two time-based new products—smartphones and the internet. Another finding is that the time spent in these activities by men has increased more than women. Therefore, the relative gender bias in favour of men still exists in rural Bangladesh, of course in disguise. This relative bias has increased slightly over time. But the pure gender bias has decreased significantly.