The New Nation - Internet Edition

WOMEN adorn high positions in Bangladesh society no doubt. The number of such high ranking women is also noted to be rising. Nonetheless, this progress of women is a very limited one noted mainly in the higher strata and well educated segments of society. Women generally continue to be underdogs in a still largely male-led society in this country. If it were only a question of male leadership either in the family or society, it would not be so much a matter of concern. The concern stems from the fact that this male dominance expresses itself often in cruel oppression on women in different spheres. A report in this paper on Saturday focussed on the violence that women members in families have to suffer at the hands of male members. According to a UN report, Bangladesh ranks fourth highest in the world in violence against women. The report observed that some 40 per cent of women fall victims of violence in Dhaka city alone.

If this is the condition in relatively more progressive and emancipated area like the capital city, then the wretched conditions of women in the vast countryside of Bangladesh hardly needs elaboration. Repression on women is considered to be particularly heavy and widespread in the rural areas of Bangladesh. They become the victims of physical assault, dowry-related attacks, deprivation of food and other resources, sexual abuse, rape, emotional abuse and forced marriage. And such harm is inflicted on them mainly by brothers, husbands, fathers and male in-laws. The laws are at present not so weak against repression on women and children. But the problem lies in their enforcement. Poverty, inadequate understanding of the victims or the potential of such victims about their human rights and the laws protecting them, inadequate attention of policemen, all these are to be blamed for unsatisfactory application of the laws in cases of violence against women.

With focussed attention given to these issues from the hierarchy of the police and regular monitoring carried out to ensure that directives are being actually carried out, the situation at the field level should improve. But only better policing will not go far in creating more secure or helpful conditions for women. Minds of their family members need to go through a transformation by way of intense social campaigns, regular media publicity that repressing on women is not only a very cowardly thing to do but that it is also prohibited in religion. Ironically, many male family members have it in their minds that women were designed to be inferior to males in all respects and that religion gives them a sort of lordship over females. Such wrong notions should be changed through active participation of religious leaders.