Women's Rights in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a country that puts on a facade of gender equality. While the constitution and several laws make provisions for the equal treatment and protection of females, few of these laws or constitutional rights are ever enforced. The primary factor behind this is that few people view women in any capacity other than that of mothers or potential mothers, and, under the further influence of out-dated “religious” beliefs, may even treat females in a family as possessions. Additionally, the ignorance that many women possess regarding their rights, or a fear of repercussion from a male dominated and highly chauvinistic society, keep them from speaking out for themselves, especially in matters concerning business, inheritance, or violence, preferring to leave the matter in the hands of sometimes quite distant male relatives. These attitudes have led to many disadvantages for females of all ages nationwide. Fathers, believing there to be no value in educating their daughters, limit their access to education, resulting in the majority of the illiterate population in Bangladesh consisting of females. In addition, girls as young as eight or nine are forced to work as servants, while many older girls take up work in factories. The salary they receive is normally only a fraction of that given to their male counterparts, and this kind of disparity can also be seen when considering the inheritance of property, where daughters may be entitled to only half as much as sons. Violence and the harassment of women have also become issues of mass importance in Bangladesh, with the number of cases of eve-teasing, rape, and domestic abuse increasing day by day. Trends and situations such as these are not capable of being solved overnight, but aside ...

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...arly evidenced by the differences that can be observed between developed and developing nations. Even though females make up less than 50 % of the Bangladeshi population, they do, nevertheless, comprise a good portion of it, and contribute accordingly to the demographics of the country, and the so-called social and economic progress associated with them. This shows that the impact of gender-based inequality, especially in a developing country, reaches far beyond humanitarian issues and actually affects the development of the country itself, and that continued discrimination against females on the basis of their gender will only serve to slacken the pace of Bangladesh’s development and prolong the suffering and mistreatment endured by women who are treated as second class citizens in a society that once claimed to revere all women as if they were their own mothers.