A large number of women in Bangladesh had arranged marriage, according to the nationwide Bangla Tribune opinion poll conducted interviewing a total of 4,800 women from across the country.
Asked whether they were allowed to make the decision about their own marriages, 40.42% of the respondents said no while 29.63% said yes.
Nearly 43% of rural women and 39% of urban women have given negative answer to the question.
Asked do they get the opportunity to choose their preferred life partners, only 29.69% answered yes while 35.19% said no.
Surprisingly, 30.13% of rural women gave positive answer to the query while 29.25% were urban women who came up with a yes.
However, asked if they were allowed to make decision on conceiving children, 49.02% of women said that they had played a major role in the decision-making process while 17.92% gave negative replies.
Of the respondents, 50.88% of rural women came up with positive replies while 47.17% of urban women said yes.
Besides, 52.79% women answered that they have full range of access in decision-making procedure in their families. On the contrary, 23.29% said they did not have the access.
With a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 2%, the survey was conducted across the 64 districts in the country on February 22-29.
Out of the 4,800 interviews, 600 women were picked from cities and villages under each of the eight divisional headquarters.
The interviews were conducted at crowded public places; respondents were selected randomly and the surveyors maintained a 10-minute interval between interviews done with a fixed questionnaire.
