“I want to be a prime minister. I came to this university because its vision is to prepare world leaders and one day I hope to be the prime minister of my country.”
One Endear, a 20-year Cambodian girl who has enrolled in the Asian University for Women (AUW), said these words confidently yesterday as she [...]

Development in Bangladesh is usually segregated into two broad contextsurban and rural. However, between these two defined areas lie many market places and growth centres which do not fall within either category and are therefore escaping the eyes of the development planners.
In Bangladesh, the exact number of hats or bazaars is not known to me [...]

Bangladesh Mahila Parishad (BMP) of Rajshahi district unit called on the government to implement its declaration on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw) for ensuring development of women in the country.
BMP said this at a discussion organised at its office on the occasion of the International Cedaw Day [...]

IT took a high level of strategizing. Women stood around the man given the task. They literally “protected” him. And in the end they and he won. He managed to “table” a piece of paper that was in danger of being snatched from his hands and mutilated by determined men.
One does not know whether to [...]

A lot has been said in the seminars held at different cozy auditoriums in the capital, by different organizations including same person under different banners on national women development policy-2008, carried in electronic and print media, whose impact is awaited. Has it stirred women and men in different strata of society, and mobilized public opinion [...]

The Indian authority Tuesday evening handed over seven girls who were trafficked several times to India. The children were handed over to the Bangladesh Rifles and Women Lawyers Association by the BSF in association with a human rights organisation of India through Benapole border.
The children are Suma (14), daughter of Shushil Mishtri, Ayesha Khatun (13), [...]

At 15 Jolly was preparing for her SSC exams. She never set for the tests. The teenager instead was married off to become a houswife. Although her parents boast of having a rich son-in-law, they have never tried to know whether their daughter is at all happy with a husband double her age.
“I feel ashamed [...]

The garment industry has become the main export sector and a major source of foreign exchange in Bangladesh over the years. It currently exports about $5 billion worth of products each year giving employment to 3 million workers of which 90% are women.
It is a discernible fact that it is, in a sense, promoting women’s [...]

Post-budget press confce on gender issue told:
Shunning the focus on merely addressing the current needs, the government should look to long-term goals emphasising gender issues while presenting a budget, speakers at a press conference yesterday said.
They said the prioritisation process should aim at achieving the broader goals of women-development issues instead of the three-year ‘mid-term [...]

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 national surveys [...]

The Supreme Court Monday asked the Indian government to examine the feasibility of having a stringent penal law akin to the one in Bangladesh to deal with cases of women and young girls being attacked with acid. A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan also asked the government to examine the feasibility of regulating the [...]

“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 primary [...]

 
Women’s Rights are almost non-existent in Bangladesh. And the number of women who are murdered, beaten, tortured, or raped is astronomically high.
And, sadly, many of the women who are attacked or raped die by suicide.
The statistics are sickening and shocking.
Below are some of the disturbing statistics just from August 2004:
(Please note that these statistics are [...]

context: an estimated 90% of the more than 3,780 export garment factories in Bangladesh violate women’s legal right to 3 months full pay maternity leave. Some companies harass and pressure the pregnant women workers to force them to quit. Others give the leave but will only take the women back as new employees. Only a [...]

A vibrant women’s rights movement in Bangladesh has much on its plate — an ominous scale of violence against women, omnipresent social and religious prejudices and poor representation in decision-making despite two women heading the government consecutively for the last 15 years. And now activists have stumbled upon the fact that the present government had [...]