Bangladesh has come a long way in terms of women empowerment, that much is nothing if not incontrovertible. From recruiting over 100 female seafarers and mariners on an annual basis to promoting gender diversity in a traditionally male-dominated industry, to even allocating 34.37% of the total budget in gender-related allocation in the fiscal year 2023-24, the nation has witnessed a steady ascent in the economic stature of women.
According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, in 2020, 72.9% of all women in Bangladesh were literate, which is close to the 77.4% applicable for all men. When it comes to employment, however, women had a participation rate of 36.4% while it was 84% for men. Again, this number was almost nonexistent even a couple of decades ago -- and the growing number of women in parliament and other positions of power such as the c-suite -- show just how far we have come as a nation.
But the economic emancipation of women is but a part of the overall work that still remains in giving women the due respect they deserve -- as a nation we have a long way to go in terms of ensuring true equality, particularly in regards to eradicating a lot of the stigma that surrounds women in our society.
Retrograde attitudes towards women still prevail in most corners of our society, which all contribute to imposing glass ceilings on both women’s mobility, both social and otherwise. But one of the most egregious issues that still keep women down in Bangladesh is child marriage; according to Girls not Brides, 51% of girls in Bangladesh are married before the age of 18 and it is a practice that is still, unfortunately, rather prevalent.
Women comprise half of our nation’s population. We have absolutely come far as a nation in acknowledging women’s autonomy and their importance to the economy, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that the playing field is well and truly equal.
