And family responsibilities are more important for women than personal careers. Interestingly, even educated girls in urban Dhaka are still trained by their mothers to be submissive and taught the twin virtues of patience and sacrifice, as marriage is viewed as the main goal of a Bangladeshi woman's life. Girls also learn to accept their inferior status in the society and to fit into socially acceptable roles. However, it is an accepted norm that a husband needs his wife mainly to perform the domestic roles and satisfy his wishes, while a wife needs a husband as her provider in all respects. Only when a woman performs her socially designated roles and efficiently will she be ensured a position of some dignity within the family.
Marital relationships are a very private and intimate matters.
It is therefore, very difficult to collect data for research of this nature. Most of the interaction between the couples is carried out in their homes and away from the public gaze. Bangladeshi women usually express serious reservations about talking their marital affairs with strangers. Therefore, I did not follow any strict sampling technique to gather information. I studied 30 individual cases of married working women in urban Dhaka, those who were known to me and willing to talk alone with me personally.