Dhaka: While Bangladesh has achieved impressive gains in women’s status and gender equality, access to reproductive health services, labour markets, physical security and role in decision-making need urgent attention. A World Bank report ‘Whispers to Voices: Gender and Social Transformation in Bangladesh’ documented changes in norms, attitudes and practices related to gender equality based on [...]

WOMEN AND WORK IN A BANGLADESH VILLAGE by Habiba Zaman (Dhaka: Narigrantha Prabartana, 1996) “Social Reform Sexuality and the State” is a collection of sixteen essays on gender dimensions of social reform and regulation of sexuality, published in the Contributions to Indian Society series, and originally appearing in 1995 as a special issue of that [...]

In support of World Food Day, CABI has announced that its video project aimed at educating women farmers in Bangladesh on improving rice seed yield will reach one million women by the end of 2006. The video, which has increased seed yield by an estimated 10% in areas exposed to the footage, forms part of [...]

A widow – a woman whose husband is no more. Losing a family member, particularly the life partner, is the worst tragedy that can happen in one’s life. But societal practices and exclusion darken a widow’s life even further. The social practices surrounding widowhood in the Indian Sub-Continent show a cross-cultural uniformity. In every culture [...]

Available data on health, nutrition, education, and economic performance indicated that in the 1980s the status of women in Bangladesh remained considerably inferior to that of men. Women, in custom and practice, remained subordinate to men in almost all aspects of their lives; greater autonomy was the privilege of the rich or the necessity of [...]

Despite initiatives and interventions undertaken at national and international levels, maternal health is still neglected in Bangladesh, and the maternal mortality ratio remains one of the highest in the world. In order to improve rural women’s access to maternity care, in 1996 the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) instituted services for birthing women in 21 [...]

  © UNICEF Bangladesh Women’s health is high on UNICEF agenda.  The Women’s Health Project consists of three sub-projects: Strengthening Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC); Women Friendly Hospital Initiative; and Social Mobilization and Communication. The health of women is a crucial factor in the health of children, but gender discrimination leaves women particularly vulnerable to disease [...]

Daulatdia, in Bangladesh, is one of the largest brothels in the world – a village of 1,600 women who sell sex to 3,000 men every day. As Claudia Hammond found, it is a punishing place that few will ever leave Arriving at the port of Goalundo Ghat, you would never guess that it houses a [...]

Mon, Mar 31, 2008 (Reuters Life!) – Shamsunnahar Hena, a gynecologist in a Bangladesh hospital, was stunned when her pregnant patient confessed to having eaten half a kilogram of soil every day since she conceived. A rising number of pregnant woman in Bangladesh’s tea-growing Sylhet region are eating charred soil, following a tradition that is [...]

Products like Nakshi Katha, dry flower, handmade quilt, jute bag, bed cover, etc have a great export potential. What stops export of these goods and earning of foreign currency is the lack of knowledge of export procedures among women entrepreneurs. For instance, Rina Rahman of Orchadia participated in many trade fairs abroad where she got [...]

Bangladeshi women’s choice of a contraceptive is influenced not only by their personal characteristics but also by their assessments of available options. For example, pill users choose their method, among other reasons, because of its convenience, availability and cost, but these factors do not play a significant role in condom users’ method choice. Users of [...]

A new study provides some of the best evidence to date that breast-feeding can make children smarter, an international team of researchers said. Children whose mothers breast-fed them longer and did not mix in baby formula scored higher on intelligence tests, the researchers in Canada and Belarus reported. About half the 14,000 babies were randomly [...]

“Nearly 25,000 Bangladeshi women and children are illegally trafficked into neighbouring countries and the Middle East every year, according to a Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association survey recently released. Traffickers have lured the women and children to migrate on false promises of employment. Ninety percent of women victims are illiterate and only five percent have [...]