Of Gendered Identities and Aspirations: Zooming into the Case of the Middle Class ‘Educated’ Urban Youth of Dhaka

With about nearly half of its population within the age range of 0-24 years old and a rapidly growing urban-centric middle class, Dhaka is a city that appears to cater to those in hopes for a better reality, economically as well as socio-politically. Nevertheless, the hope gets problematized when reality reflects ris-ing occurrences of gender-based violence and discrimination against policies that claim to eradicate them through institutional help, such as education (e.g. schooling). This research explores narratives from an emerging diverse group of ‘edu-cated’ middle class youth whose lived, perceived and aspired experiences illus-trate a reality that is far more nuanced than what statistics and state policies provide – a deep-rooted association of heteropatriarchal and heteronormative beliefs and practices that finds its way into their lives as they embark upon journeys to ‘become someone’. The association is enhanced through the insti-tutional structures of family, religion and community. Amidst micro level nego-tiations, the gendered narratives produce a set of cross-cutting agendas that are timely and significant to understand a behind-the-picture aspect of the reality of the ‘next generation’ which seems to have been normalized in the process of reproducing the unjust dominant discourses.