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The way struggling women’s nature changes

Published : Saturday, 17 September, 2022 at 12:00 AM  Count : 352

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh's independence. When the country became independent, the GDP growth rate of the country was -5.48% and in 2019 it was 8.15%. But due to Coronavirus, our GDP has decreased slightly by 5.2% percent in 2020. While the per capita income of newly independent Bangladesh was 134 US dollars, in 2020 it has become 2064 US dollars. While more than eighty percent of the population in Bangladesh lived below the poverty line in the early seventies, by 2019 only 20 percent of our population lives below the poverty line. By the year 2018-19, our export revenue has reached USD 40.5 billion thanks to the garment sector. Currently, Bangladesh is the second largest country in the world in the garment industry and the major part of this achievement is due to our women's labor.

According to economists, during the war in 1971, apart from sectors like agriculture, industry and services, four core three million houses were destroyed in rural areas of the country alone. Today, the construction of the Padma Bridge in Bangladesh has become possible. Now let's look at human welfare indicators like education, health, gender equality. The drop-out rate from school today is only 18 percent. In 1974 our literacy rate was only 26.8%, in 2019 it has increased to 74.7%. Apart from this, gender equality has been achieved to a large extent at primary and secondary education levels.

In terms of health, Bangladesh has been able to reduce maternal mortality and infant mortality by 75 percent. Where in 1975 there were 600 maternal deaths per 1 lakh births, the number has increased to 574 in 1990 and only 173 in 2017. In 1973, the infant mortality rate was 167 per 1,000 births, but by 2020, the ratio had come down to just 21 per 1,000 births. Between 2003 and 2019, 3.8 million children in Bangladesh came under the immunization program and Bangladesh has been polio-free since 2006. If we talk about gender equality, it must be said that Bangladesh has recently become the first for the second time in the reduction of the 'Gender Gap Index' in entire South Asia. In the 'Global Gender Gap Index' of 2020, Bangladesh managed to reduce gender inequality by 73 percent. Between 1996 and 2017, women's labor force participation in Bangladesh increased from 15.8 to 36.3 percent, compared to the South Asian average of 35 percent.

Let alone the prime minister or the opposition leader, it is rather difficult to say where the girls of Bangladesh are not working with their heads held high, including parliament, courts, police, army, administration, universities, and development sector. I can understand how much the women's society of Bangladesh has achieved in fifty years of independence, just by looking at my own house. Women of our country have come a long way. But whenever we look deeper, the picture looks quite different. Child marriage is still ongoing, violence against women has not stopped. Equal rights for men and women in property have not been established. Women are regularly subjected to various forms of harassment in the workplace. Also women are not getting equal pay for doing the same work. Even women cannot see their dreams. It is determined by society, religion, and the state. As a result, it can be said that women are still doing the same as women who struggled to survive decades ago. Only women's struggles have changed.















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