Bangladesh needs to do more to achieve gender balance

The first Bangladeshi diplomat to be appointed as the UN under-secretary general, Rabab Fatima, in a recent interview with a Dhaka-based newspaper said that Bangladesh is doing extremely well in terms of achieving gender parity. Currently, she is in Doha attending the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5) where she gave the interview. It has been, however, clearly stated in the Doha Programme of Action that development cannot take place without having women fully anchored equally in that process. This hardly needs to be overemphasised.
There should not be any argument over the necessity that a state should ensure gender equality in the context of resources and services. If women are not empowered through ensuring equal means of economic opportunity for women, a country cannot be strong in these modern times. For developing a strong economy, it is necessary to invest in women entrepreneurs and provide them with access to finance and markets, and not just education.
Rabab Fatima is right that Bangladesh has achieved a lot in terms of women emancipation in economic and social spheres. The growth of ubiquitous garments industries and micro credit schemes of different NGOs have lifted a great number of poor women of rural areas from the quagmire of poverty. Even in government decision making, women’s participation in Bangladesh is significantly increasing. Here is a country where the job of the prime minister, opposition leader, speaker in the parliament and other key posts is now being delivered by women. This is, no doubt, unique in the world.
Even in poverty reduction women’s efforts are significantly contributing to changing the traditional economic pattern of our society. Yet there are a lot of things that need to be done. Bangladesh now needs to fight all the barriers to women entrepreneurship. Even now there are many families in Bangladesh, and sadly they are mostly located in rural areas that discourage, even prohibit, women’s work outside home. It is now time to fight this backward-looking and weird mindset.
The truth is unless we can assure ourselves of a stable and accountable government, no section of the people can be empowered meaningfully. In the present situation the people as a whole have been disempowered.