In South Asia, cycling has long been intertwined with labour, as reflected in the wide range of rickshaws on its streets—from cycle-rickshaws and rickshaw-vans to a growing number of electric three-wheelers. The rickshaw has been closely associated with the embodied experience of working-class men and hegemonic ideals of the ‘male breadwinner’. However, in Bangladesh, the electrification of this mode of transport is also bringing in more diverse bodies and people, including women and workers with disabilities. Building on ethnographic fieldwork on the cycle-rickshaw industry in Dhaka, this paper interrogates how the advent of the electric rickshaw is changing the embodied and gendered nature of rickshaw labour. By drawing in the perspectives of elderly workers, women and rickshaw pullers with disabilities, it nuances normative ideals of the male breadwinner and contributes to a more diverse understanding of the gendered forms of earning and provisioning that rickshaw work affords.
Find the article here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2026.2651452