The New Nation - Internet Edition

(From previous issue))

Powerful families are generally immune from such abusive practices. Poor women are more vulnerable as they often lack a familial supportive umbrella to protect them. The poorer the woman, the greater is the likelihood of abandonment, divorce, and oppression. A large number of women are divorced and murdered for dowry. Within the family men have the monopoly over means of coercion and direct violence. The failure to fetch a large dowry on the part of the wife according to the demands of her husband can make her vulnerable to divorce, torture, acid throwing, and even murder. As Table 3 shows clearly, the incidence of domestic violence has increased very rapidly. A large majority of victims are from the lower socioeconomic strata who lack protective shelter and the resources for retaliation or redress.

Poorer women who often work in the fields, in construction, in factories, as domestic helpers and in the market are also vulnerable to sexual abuse, assault, and rape. There is an alarming rise in the incidence of rape (Table 3). Violence against women remains largely unreported mainly due to prevailing norms and values regarding women's honor, the insecurity of victims, and due to lengthy legal procedures that discourage people from seeking legal support.

Moreover, the legal process is complicated and the police are often influenced by political pressure and by bribes offered by mastaans (muscle-men or thugs) and violators, with the result that they either do not take adequate action or remain inactive.

During the period of legal litigation women neither get legal protection of their choice,7 nor financial support to save them and her family members from starvation and onslaught of violence from her ex-husband or mastaans. Poverty Impacts of Safety Net Programs A Public Food Distribution System exists in Bangladesh but its benefits are generally accrued by civil servants and the armed forces. The most effective channels of delivery of food to the poor have been the Rural Development (previously known as Food-for-Work) and Vulnerable Groups Development (VGD) projects. Both use wheat provided by World Food Program (WFP), bilateral donors, and the Government. The Rural Development project supports rural construction and maintenance activities while generating temporary employment. During 1996-1997, the project distributed over 195,000 tons of wheat and Suppression of violence against Women and Children Act, 2000 has made a provision of safe custody during the trial period but it vested absolute authority on the Tribunal to decide whether the victim needs protection of safe custody or not. Moreover, the Act is silent about the mechanism for safe custody before the case is sent to the Tribunal for trial.

Generated 30 million workdays for an estimated 450,000 participants. Women constituted a quarter of its participants; it increased to one half in 2000.

The VGD program, however, is solely directed towards the most disadvantaged rural women. It provides them with wheat and trains them on issues such as health nutrition, family planning, market-based income-generating activities, and literacy with the help of NGOs to make them more self-reliant.

These programs not only protect the target groups during lean periods but they also help the poor to generate savings for future investment. It has been found that the incidence and intensity of poverty is considerably lower among the target groups than in the nontarget groups. Sixty-three percent of Food-for-Work beneficiaries are deemed to belong to the category of the extreme poor compared with 72 percent of the control group. Women's Access to Social Services Implication of Water Sanitation Services for Women Increasing investment in the social sector is a prerequisite for creating an enabling environment for human development. Social sector investment broadly includes housing, compulsory primary and nonformal education, public health, and water and sanitation.

Analyses of women's access to social services primarily cover poor women's access to water and sanitation, health, and education. Access to basic amenities such as water and sanitation, housing, and electricity not only varies by class but also has implications for gender.

Whereas more than four fifths of the richer households have their water piped to and from a tubewell inside their homes, in both rural and urban areas poorer households collect water from a neighbor's house or from a communal standpipe or tap or tubewell. This affects women's time use pattern and energy levels since they are mostly responsible for water collection and management. The median time needed to collect drinking water is around 30 minutes per trip in urban slums and, generally, at least two trips a day are necessary to meet a family's drinking water needs. The situation is comparable for rural women from poorer households and even worse in coastal and hilly regions, where obtaining safe drinking water is a big problem (Afsar 1999).

Moreover, the growing threat of arsenic poisoning has made the lives of thousands of women, men, and children miserable. Existing evidence suggests that the incidence of sickness is almost 20 percent higher for households that lack piped water and sanitary toilet facilities. Poorer women get up earlier than men to queue up for water and take advantage of the dark while using communal or hanging and other types of toilets that hardly have any arrangement for privacy. As a result they become more vulnerable to health hazards than men do. Existing estimates on morbidity (Rahman 1999, Afsar 1999a) suggest that urban poor women in their youth (15-24) and at the middle of their reproductive age cycle (30-44) suffer from greater morbidity than their male counterparts in the same age group. Rural women aged between 30 and 44 years were also found to be more vulnerable in terms of morbidity than their male counterparts.

Country Briefing Paper-Women in Bangladesh Existing taboos and prejudices regarding disease and food, which in turn affect health, are prevalent. In general, rural people of all ages and sex suffer from harmful taboos and prejudices but women suffer more, because these taboos are mostly related with reproductive diseases and women have lesser information exposure and education than men.

Health Infrastructure and Bias in Health Program Physical infrastructure for public and reproductive health exists only in rural areas but services are extremely inadequate. Occupancy rates at 31-bed thana health centers are below 50 percent and only 15 percent of the sick seek treatment from government hospitals for current sickness. Government-run hospitals and health centers often lack drugs, nursing care, and equipment. Pharmacies are the major place where female readymade garment workers seek treatment. In villages and towns people also seek treatment from private doctors (Afsar and Baker 1999). Family planning programs mainly target women. Though family planning programs have enjoyed remarkable success in increasing the contraception prevalence rate, concerns exist in relation to the quality of services, the scope of exercising women's reproductive rights and choices, and male participation in family planning programs. Reproductive health services are mainly concentrated towards fertility control programs, ignoring women's overall reproductive health concerns.

Facilities related to education such as the "Food for Education" stipend scheme for girls up to Class 8, which exist in rural areas, do not exist in urban areas. The girl child's access to primary education and nonformal education are generally constrained by a number of factors that include:

(i) The domestic demand for girls' labor is more regular and generally higher than that for boys of the same age group. While boys become economically active at the age of seven and eight, it has also been observed that parents make special efforts to keep sons in school.

(ii) Despite the Government's efforts to encourage girls in education by providing free schooling at the primary level, and scholarships and food at the secondary level, it is found that some private costs associated with travel, stationery, examination fees, and clothing (particularly for girls) are beyond the means of poor households.

(To be continued)