Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in terms of improving its literacy and is one of the very few countries which are on track for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. However, women are still discriminated against in the intra-household allocation of resources, in terms of education. Till today, parents prefer spending more for the education of their boys than girls since a boy’s education is seen as an investment for the parents’ future. Girls’ education is useless since they leave their parents’ house after they are married, therefore and cannot look after them during their old age. Also, female labour is required for domestic help, therefore parents have no incentive to send them to school.

Though the gross enrolment rate of female student to a male student both at the primary and secondary level is 1.03, this rate declines to only 0.53 at the tertiary level. Adult literacy rate is 44.2 percent for females compared to 56.3 for males.

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