The New Nation - Internet Edition

Fahmida Islam

In the message conveyed on International Women's Day March 8, 2006, the former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan said "The theme of this year's International Women's Day - the role of women in decision-making - is central to the advancement of women around the world and to the progress of humankind as a whole." According to Inter-Parliamentary Union, there were 11 women Heads of State at the beginning of 2006 and women consisted of 16.3% of the world's parliamentarians. So, in his message, Kofi Annan mentioned, "We do have achievements to celebrate in women's representation around the world. But we have far, far more to do. The rate of progress overall is slow."

At this stage, we need to look at the background. In 1995, the Beijing Platform for Action identified women in power and decision-making as one of its critical areas of concern. The Platform defined two strategic objectives under this critical area: to ensure women's equal access to and full participation in power structures and decision-making and to increase women's capacity to participate in decision-making and leadership. Since the pace of progress is slow, women continue to remain under-represented, their voices unheard, much more needs to be done, not only to accelerate the inclusion of women into formal decision-making bodies, but also to increase their impact in decisionmaking.

The Platform for Action adopted at Beijing explains that women's lives should be viewed within the social, economic and political framework of the society, and not outside of it The Beijing Conference reaffirmed that "women's equal participation in decision-making is not only a demand for justice or democracy but can also be seen as a necessary condition for women's interests to be taken into account Without the active participation of women and incorporation of women's perspectives at all levels of decision-making, the goals of equality, development and peace cannot be achieved."

Therefore, two arguments - democracy concerned argument and direct participation arguments are advanced, although there is considerable overlap between the two. Now a days, government of different countries have formulated their action plans for women. This is the result of women's direct participation in different kinds of movement all over the world specially the Beijing conference and the follow-up meetings.

The Constitution of Bangladesh provides for equality of men and women in all aspects. Women are entitled to the same fundamental rights as men. Article 10 of the Constitution ensures participation of women in all spheres of national life. Article 65 (3) provides for reserved seats for women in the parliament and Article 9 promotes the special representation of women in local government

Women's participation in politics has increased during the last two decades. A quota has ensured women's presence in the local government and National Parliament

The 300 general seats are to be filled by direct election from single member territorial constituencies. As shown in column 3 of table -1, the number of women elected in general seats has not exceeded seven as yet Women in reserved seats were elected through indirect method [by the votes of Members of Parliament (MPs) in general seats]. Women constituted only 2 percent of the total candidates who contested election in 2001 (the last election). In the absence of provision for quota, they are yet to exceed 2 percent of membership of the parliament (Table 1).

As we can see the presence of women in the cabinet, the highest decision making body, remains extremely low, ranging between 2 to 6 (table 2). Findings depicts that a correlation exists between the weaker status of women in the political party, parliament and their even weaker representation in the cabinet

The situation is slightly beter in the case of local government Twenty five percent of the members are women.

Political power and decision making in a real sense flows from women's participation in governance, at the grassroots. In Bangladesh, there'are local governance institutions both at urban and rural areas.

From 1999, the government kept the provision of 1/3 reserve seats for women in urban and rural government, with the total number of ward commissioners or members of union council depending from area to area.

Union Parishad (UP) is the basic elective local government institution in the village grassroot level. Table-4 and Table-5 show the representation of women in the UP election in open seats and reserved seats respectively.

Compared to 1997 elections 129 more women competed for the open chairman posts in 2003 (Table-4), which is an increase of 35% and definitely a positive sign. However, the negative picture is in the reserved seats for women where 47% of elected representatives of 1997 chose not to sontest in 2003 UP election (New Steps, 2003).

The decline of contest in the reserved seats and increasing participation in the direct elections shows a positive change in the atitude of women for gaining more respectable positions.

(To be continued)

Table-4: Women in UP (1997-2003) in the open seats

Table-4

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Source: Election Commission, Public Relations Department

Table-5: Women Members in reserved seats of UP (1997-2003)

Table-5

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Source: Election Commission, Public Relations Department

Different findings describe that

· Due to the mode of election, the reserved seats turned out to be a 'vote bank' to atain absolute majority for the ruling party in power

· Their election/nomination depends on the will of the party leaders. Qualities like experience of being political activist, involvement in women's movement or consciousness about women's political empowerment were not the prime consideration for their nomination/election. Factors like personal relationship and personal loyalty played supreme role. It has been aptly reported that candidates with independence of mind have been deliberately eliminated in favour of mild, docile and loyal candidates (Haq and Khan, New Nation, 6 August, 1994)

· Female MPs in the direct seats stand on their own political strength while those in the reserved ones are dependent to their male counterparts in taking part in parliamentary activities. As a result, they could not have effective voice in the parliament (Choudhury, 2003)

· Reserved seat MPs do not have 2ny specific job responsibilities and therefore mostly serve ornamental function like inaugurating programmes, atending seminars and discussions etc (British Council and Democracy Watch, Seminar Report, 2004)

In addition to all those points above, there also remain some other socio-economic barriers which act as impediments on the way of participation and development of women leadership.

In a traditional society like Bangladesh, woman usually grows up in such a culture that she gradually develops her worldview in the eyes of men. They usually learn to accept decisions that men (father, brother, husband) do on their behalf. They are given litle opportunity to make decisions or develop leadership skills outside the family context Their patern of grooming up affects them in such a way that even in an educated family, they assume the status of others (father, brother or husband) as their own status or identity.

The Constitution of Bangladesh gives equal right to women to enter any employment or office in the civil service. Considering the unequal representation, 10 percent gazeted posts are kept reserved for women in addition to merit, which is applicable in all types of public employment But representation of women in 30 civil service cadres is still marginal. So they had very limited opportunities to intervene at the policy and decision making level. Overtime the situation is improving as shown in table 7. Representation of women in some of the cadre services may be mentioned here. There are more than 25 women who are working in Foreign Service in different positions and capacities. Women representation in the Judicial Cadre is 12.3% and the Audit and Accounts Cadre is 13.6%.

Women have also been encouraged in non-traditional professions like Armed Forces and Law Enforcing Agencies. In the police department there are about 92 women cadre officers. In the armed forces, 99 women in the Army, 49 in Air force and 25 in Navy are working as Commissioned Officers. Four women judges have been appointed in the Supreme Court

Table-6: Women in senior positions in bureaucracy

Table-6

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Table-7: Decision making posts held by women: Year-wise Picture

Table-7

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Table-6 shows women's representation in different positions of decision making posts. Table-7 shows that over the years the number of decision-making posts hold by women is increasing. In case of civil service women join through a competitive examination along with the men and get promoted under the same rules. Initially, a small percentage of women used to come into the service because of some so-called traditional socioeconomic reasons. But gradually over time more and more women are geting higher education and showing their interest to get into the cadre service. So, slow and late induction of women into the service stands as one of the important reasons of limited participation in the decision making posts.

At this stage some challenges as faced by the working women may be mentioned here. These also act as impediments on the way of women's participation. As pointed by Dr. Lorraine Corner (Regional Programme Adviser, 1997, UNIFEM E&SEA, Bangkok) that modern work paterns and practices are designed for men who have a supportive wife to take care of their essential domestic needs and family responsibilities at home. Working women have to meet the dual expectations of their family and work roles, giving rise to role conflict In case of any failure related to family affairs society tends to judge her as a "bad" wife or mother. In case of men, society regards their family and personal roles as discretionary, meaning that they are subsidiary to and have to be fited in with the primary work role.

A statement of a woman working at? decision making level (mentioned by Dr. Lorraine) may be mentioned here in the following manner: women must continually prove themselveS to be capable, but the men are assumed to be competent even when they are demonstrably not Women must provide strong arguments to support tl1eir views; men are simply believed on the basis of their professional qualifications and personal relationships.

Regarding increasing political participation, this is recognised that without reservation, women had very litle chance of geting into politics at all. So as an immediate step to place more women in decision making most of the time recommendation has been in favour of reservation at this initial stage which will gradually generate a pool of experienced women politician in decision-making process. Side by side necessary exposure and training (both at national and regional level) and experience be given in order to make the participation effective. Specific legislation and guidelines specifying the roles and responsibilities of women members be issued as soon as possible. The symbolic gestures of reservations are not desired and will not fulfil the object of BPF A.

Change in atitude towards girl child and change in oriedtation of mindset of boy child is an area, we need to be serious. Think about Meena cartoon. We must ensure equal rights and access for both daughters and sons. Sons must be trained to share the family and caring responsibilities. Daughters must be exposed to decision making factors so that they can think and develop themselves independently. Media can play a very important role in this respect This thought is basically from a long term aspect

Institutions and organisational barriers need to be addressed. Provisions should be introduced to create more women and family-friendly working environment, we can now move to introduce parental leave and emergency leave for caregivers. Besides, reduced and flexible working hour, opportunities to work seating at home, can also be introduced. Effective women's network can be established which can help and support the career development and promotions of women like association of women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh.

One of the goal of Bangladesh National Action Plan for Women's Advancement is "raise/create public awareness about women's differential needs, interest and priorities and increase commitment to bring about improvements in women's situation and condition." Effective implementation of this goal will require awareness and motivational training for men. The concept of sharing family and caring responsibilities at home must be developed among men.

In Millennium Development Goal 3, the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments was established as one of the four indicators for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. At the national level, Bangladesh government is trying to integrate gender dimensions in different programmes. Beter follow-up and complementary efforts by civil society is needed. Finally, I would like to remind one statement mentioned by noble laureate Amartya Sen (in Nepal Times, #16, November 10-11, 2000) - "The voice of women is critically important for the world's future not just for women's future". Let us try to realise this statement for the interest of both men and women.