Congratulations to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on winning the Global Women’s Leadership Award, which she receives today in Sydney, Australia.
The award is intended as a lifetime honour, conferred to the PM by US-based NGO Global Summit of Women for her brilliant leadership in the area of advancing women’s education and women’s entrepreneurship in Bangladesh.
This recognition comes at an important time in our history, particularly considered the momentum generated by women’s movements across the world in the last year.
While Bangladesh has, for many years, had women in top positions in government, when it comes to the rights and safety of the millions of ordinary women across the country, we still have a long way to go.
PM Hasina knows this, and is the right person to address these challenges head on, as we move towards meeting our development goals.
Bangladesh recently scrapped the two-finger test for rape, an outmoded and barbaric practice that forced rape victims to relive their trauma, and that was a step in the right direction.
Much headway has been made in empowering female entrepreneurship through financial inclusion -- the spread of technologies like mobile banking across the country have allowed the poorest of women to participate in the mainstream economy.
But let us not live in denial -- rape, assault, and sexual harassment still exist in this country to an alarming degree, and a patriarchal mindset still persists in much of our society.
It is our hope that the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will address these concerns and take us forward, so that we, as a nation, can truly be an example to the world for women’s empowerment.
