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Important role of women participation in BD politics

Published : Saturday, 20 May, 2023 at 12:00 AM  Count : 1196

Important role of women participation in BD politics

Important role of women participation in BD politics

Despite the remarkable progress of women in many professions, politics is not one of them. Indeed, around the world, women have been conspicuous by their absence in decision and policy making in government.

The real empowerment of women is achieved when they can participate at all levels in both public and private sectors.
 
The inclusion of women in political processes is a key element in achieving a truly inclusive democracy, and women must have the chance to exercise their political rights and participate in all political decision-making.

 It is about understanding the fundamental human right of women to participate, and incorporate their perspective at every stage of the planning and implementation processes.

It is about working on the underlying political culture, and ensuring that gender inclusivity initiatives go beyond tokenistic gestures and genuinely addresses the underlying causes of exclusion.

While most countries in the world have not achieved gender parity, gender quotas have substantially contributed to show progress over the years.

In countries with legislated candidate quotas, women's representation is five percentage points and seven percentage points higher in parliaments and local government, respectively, compared to countries without such legislation.

There is established and growing evidence that women's leadership in political decision-making processes improves them.

Women demonstrate political leadership by working across party lines through parliamentary women's caucuses-even in the most politically combative environments-and by championing issues of gender equality, such as the elimination of gender-based violence, parental leave and childcare, pensions, gender-equality laws, and electoral reforms.

Women's involvement in government decision making is giving significant political visibility to women's rights worldwide.

Although women are not a homogeneous group, they tend to be supporters of other women and have been instrumental in placing women's issues and concerns on to the parliamentary agenda. One such major concern is violence against women.

Although not an issue confined only to women, it is no coincidence that we have seen increasing attention directed to eliminate all forms of violence against women.

The Former Cultural Secretary of the Bangladesh Women's Awami League and Actress Rokeya Prachi who has been busy with social and political activities for a long time has her say on it.

" In Bangladesh's War of Liberation in 1971, women were on the frontline. They participated in the war as fighters, helping hands, organisers and public opinion shapers.

Taramon Bibi, Sitara Begum, Geeta Kar and Shirin Banu are prominent war heroines; two of them were given Bangladesh's prominent gallantry award, the Bir Pratik. War heroes also include women who risked their lives to support the Bengali nationalist fighters with funds, shelter and medical aid.

In the war of 1971, Bengali women were at the centre of the sacrifice," Rokaya Prachi asserted.

The 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh was a landmark as the first document in the history of the Indian subcontinent to recognise women's political participation.

It institutionally established women's equal rights in both the public and the private spheres.

Bangladesh's founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's wife, the first First Lady of Bangladesh, Fazilatunnesa Mujib, shared with Bangabandhu  in formulating the blueprint for the independence of the country.

Bangladesh's current prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, is also a mention-worthy home-grown political leader, emerging from a long process of student and political movements, she added.

For most of its lifetime of 52 years, Bangladesh has been ruled by female. It holds the record for the most political rule by female heads of government.

The country is ranked seventh in the world in terms of  women political empowerment by the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap 2020 Report.

However, it has also been ranked 86th on the sub-index on parliamentary participation and 124th with regard to cabinet portfolios by women.

In the latest election pledges, Bangladesh's major political parties committed to increase the number of women parliamentarians.

They appeared to coalesce around a point to increase the number of reserved seats to more than 60, corresponding to one per district in future.

The current Awami League government in Bangladesh has the highest number of women Cabinet members, with 10 women-led ministries.

The leader of Parliament  and the Leader of the Opposition in parliament are also women.

The first direct election of women members, under a reserved seat scheme, was held in 1997.

This marked the beginning of a new trend in women's participation in local electoral politics in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh's Local Government (Union Parishad) Act 2009 sketches out the rural governance units.

Three seats of the local government units are exclusively reserved for women members, who are elected by the local voters.

This is regarded as a milestone for change in the political landscape.

Bangladesh has created opportunities for the participation of women in development planning and implementation at local level.

Within the policy framework, there are 13 social development committees (SDCs) at all local government units.

The SDCs are meant to ensure transparency and accountability in governance and service delivery and are mandated to incorporate women from the community.

In Bangladesh, this is the primary structure to nurture women leadership at local level.

This strategy has enhanced the visibility of local female leaders at the grassroots level enormously.

In Bangladesh, the number of female voters has increased steadily yet remarkably.

According to the Election Commission of Bangladesh, there were a total 53 million male voters in comparison with 52 million female voters in the latest election of 2018.

Although turnout in 2018 was low, female voters' participation has shown an upward trend since 2008.

In 2008, out of 70 million, a majority of voters 46 million were female. Large female voter participation in the political process has given an added boost to the agenda of women in politics.

Bangladesh's challenges with women in politics have been no different to the global experience.

Women face exclusion from political structures for functional, cultural and personal reasons.

Global debates on the enabling environment for women's political empowerment are centred on two major arguments - the intrinsic and instrumentalist arguments.

The intrinsic argument is founded on the basic human rights concept that women constitute half of the global population, therefore it is fair to create pathways for equal political participation.

The instrumentalists differ, stating that men and women play different gender roles and have different visions about politics.

This article is grounded in the notion that women's participation adds much-needed feminist values to politics.

Women's political participation is connected to the nature of politics, especially in a liberal democracy.

Democracy serves men more than women. From ancient Greece to the 21st century, politics has established a public-private dichotomy.

Women are systematically excluded from politics as a domain of the public world.

Western philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hobbes and Hegel strongly believed that women should stay in the private sphere religious sentiment and social values also narrowed the scope of women participation in politics and social activities .

This public-private dichotomy for women remains the foundation of various forms of democracies.

From a normative perspective, many philosophers considered the private sphere non-political, so there has been no effort to explore the political elements of the private space.







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