One of the major problems in Bangladesh is the difficult relationship between the various ethnic minority communities and the mainstream people and Government. Many international and national development practitioners, scholars and representatives of local government have tried to identify the factors that contribute to this problem. Against this background, the present thesis seeks to identify the processes of social exclusion and inclusion within the Chakma and Garo indigenous communities in relation to wider Bangladeshi society. Since the nineteenth century, social exclusion and inclusion have been prominent concepts in policy debates across Europe. This thesis discusses the fact that poverty and social exclusion are often seen as closely related, overlapping or even indistinguishable in the existing literature. Thus there are no uncontested definitions of poverty, social exclusion and inclusion, and these concepts remain the subject of definitional disagreements among intellectuals. This research has tried to bring out these concepts in a gender perspective on Bangladesh as a developing country, examining indigenous women?s status at the domestic and wider societal levels and recent developments in this. As a result, the research has produced a perspective on gender as a contributory factor to social exclusion and inclusion in Bangladesh. The inductive nature of this study was developed through observation of, and empirical findings on, indigenous women?s and other participants? perceptions, attitudes, and experiences in particular social contexts. The data were collected using qualitative methods. Data analysis was done through the qualitative approaches that are presented by thematic analysis. The findings of this research indicate that the processes of social exclusion and inclusion of indigenous people, especially women, need to be addressed in a policy paper, since creating appropriate policy tools would be the best way of spreading – rather than imposing – the basic values and standards necessary to give a sense of inclusion to all the people of Bangladesh. At the same time, this research has highlighted the fact that, though Chakma and Garo indigenous women live in communities with different social structures – patriarchal for Chakma women and matrilineal for Garo women – in practice these two groups share common life experiences. Finally, the findings identify a gap in current government policies which has led to the Garo community being the most excluded of all the CHT (Chittagong Hill Tracts) indigenous communities, and the most in need of strategies for development in Bangladesh.