It’s a welcome verdict advancing woman’s cause

The High Court verdict Tuesday allowing students to use the name of their mother or father or any other legal guardian as their guardian in filling up student information forms (SIFs), such as those for admission or examinations, has been rightly welcomed by a cross section of people, including the women rights activists. Before, a student had to mention the names of both father and mother separately in the SIFs. From now, a mother alone can stand as a guardian of a student.
However, it all happened in 2007 when the Rajshahi Education Board refused to issue the admit card to an examinee as she had no name of a father whom she could mention in the examination form. She was denied her constitutional right to education.
Soon, a writ petition jointly filed by Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust, Bangladesh Mahila Parishad and Nari Pokkho in 2009 challenging the legality of denying a student to appear at the SSC examination. After more than 12 years, the High Court in the verdict observed that mentioning candidates’ mother’s name in the SIF forms was ‘sufficient’.
Though in practice the verdict would mean little to most people in Bangladesh, it has immense significance as far as the dignity of a woman or a mother as a separate entity in society is concerned. A predominantly patriarchal society that Bangladesh is, women here in general are stuck behind. The court upholding her equal right beside her male counterpart when she is a mother of children is a recognition our society needed to advance itself as a progressive society.
Bangladesh is still a society where gender discrimination is rampant. It is not only in the backward rural areas, even in sophisticated urban places women in general do not have independence. There are many conservative families that find educating their girl children beyond secondary school as redundant. And if these families are poor, they find it even a burden to send their girl children to schools. In workplaces also women are discriminated against.
In this backward society, the HC verdict recognising that a mother alone can stand as a guardian of a student has great symbolic value.