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In My View

A well-deserved recognition of Bangladeshi moms

Published : Friday, 27 January, 2023 at 12:00 AM  Count : 496
Syed Badiuzzaman
This past Tuesday was a victory day for Bangladeshi mothers. The top court of the country delivered a landmark judgement granting mothers the honor of becoming legal guardians alongside fathers of their children. This historic verdict has lifted up the status of women in Bangladesh, a country still heavily dominated by men.  

Bangladesh now joins many countries in the world including the United States, Canada and Britain where both parents serve as legal guardians to their children. The verdict has established the long overdue rights of mothers over their children putting women one step ahead even though it will still take a long time to walk in parallel with men in Bangladesh.      

The momentous judgement pronounced by Bangladesh High Court brings a breath of fresh air for millions upon millions of mothers throughout the country. It reflects women�s progress in this South Asian nation. It is also an outcome of the continuous fight for women�s rights in a country where men still have the final say in both family and public life.  

The verdict has come as a result of a discriminatory incident involving a young female student in Bangladesh. According to the case history, the student of the northwestern district of Thakurgaon was denied admit card for the Secondary School Certificate examination in 2007 as she could not use her father�s name in the registration form which was a requirement for taking part in the exam. Her mother raised the girl as her father abandoned them.

Out of that tragic episode, something positive, in fact, quite encouraging for the mothers of Bangladesh in particular and women in general just came � thanks to three women organizations of the country. Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust, Bangladesh Mahila Parishad and Nari Paksha filed a writ to the High Court in August 2009 challenging the legality of the incident. The High court then issued a rule asking why this discrimination should not be declared unconstitutional and contrary to the law of the country.

Describing the discriminatory system as an obstacle to equality, human rights and especially the right to education, the court also ordered the education boards to submit a report mentioning the measures taken to ensure participation of those eligible students who were unable to use their fathers� names in the registration form for the exam. However, there wasn�t any progress over this important case for more than 13 years. BLAST had to file a supplementary affidavit on behalf of the petitioners in June 2021 and the top court delivered its verdict this past Tuesday.

Well, as the old adage goes, better late than never. We welcome the verdict of the court even though it has come a lot later than expected. However, there are a couple of nagging questions. But the answers to those questions can be found nowhere. Wasn�t there a single similar incident in Bangladesh, a country where millions of girls sat for the SSC exams over the last 15 years from 2007 to 2022? If there were, then what happened to those students? We have no way of knowing that. But still we want to celebrate this moment because the moms in Bangladesh have succeeded in gaining a significant right of theirs � a right well-deserved. So, congratulations, moms!

It is, indeed, a very proud moment for mothers in Bangladesh. But even though the landmark verdict has significantly raised the status of women in Bangladesh, they are still heavily dominated by men in many areas in the country. Outwardly, it may look that there has been a great progress of women in Bangladesh as this country�s head of the government was two women (one of whom is still holding this position) for 30 years out of the nation�s 52-year history; they are still facing many challenges, especially the women in the rural areas. Women in Bangladesh are currently halfway through their empowerment. They still have a long way to go.

Let us begin with the country�s political system which is still heavily controlled and influenced by men in Bangladesh. At the heart of the nation�s political system lies the JatiyaSangsad which is the parliament. The JatiyaSangsad looks impressive with the country�s three distinguished women in three top positions � the Speaker, the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition. But there are only 21 directly elected female legislators in the 350-seat parliament. And most of those legislators belong to only one party -- the ruling Awami League.

Women in 50 reserved seats in parliament are not directly elected. Most women aspiring to become a member of parliament in Bangladesh choose to contest for the reserved seats rather than participating in the direct election as they find it a lot easier still today in Bangladesh. As experienced by many women activists and politicians, there is still a culture of exclusion within the major political parties in the country. Male politicians view their female counterparts as inferior while the centuries-old supremacy by men over women still continues in this South Asian nation.

And then there is the glass ceiling for women at work places. Women are still far behind men in many professions, such as lawyers, professors, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, journalists and of course the government jobs. Most of the top positions in all these fields are still held by men. Even though we are seeing a rising number of women in Bangladesh Civil Service or BCS, they still have a long way to go to catch up with their male counterparts. Like in many professions, women are also significantly underrepresented in the mass media of Bangladesh.  

As documented by the Borgen Project, a Washington-based American national campaign to make poverty a focus of the U.S. foreign policy, violence against women and child marriage continues to remain major problems in Bangladesh. �Two out of three married women in Bangladesh have experienced domestic violence at some point of their lifetime and almost 60% of girls are married before their 18th birthday.� And then these girls may even be abandoned by the families of their husbands if they cannot bear children. Bangladesh does have laws called �Domestic Violence Prevention and Protection Act� and �Child Marriage Restraint Act� but they have little impacts.

And as noticed by UN Women, women in Bangladesh are also discriminated against in family life. A predominantly Muslim country, Bangladesh follows religious laws especially in respect of marriage, divorce, custody of children, maintenance and inheritance and these laws often discriminate against women. While Bangladeshi women made spectacular progress in some fields greatly contributing to both family and national life, they still have a long way to go to close their gap with men. Bangladeshi women will take many more years to adequately empower them and earn a higher degree of self-dependence.

However, this past Tuesday, January 24, 2023 will go down in history as a great day for women of Bangladesh. This day gave them something they will cherish about for the rest of their life -- thanks to the landmark judgement from the top court of the nation. But the journey has just begun. And Bangladeshi women are �fired up and ready to go� as Barack Obama, the former U.S. president famously said during his first election campaign about American women.
-    The writer is a Toronto-based journalist who also writes for the Toronto Sun as a guest columnist












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