Gender Inquality in Bangladesh

Gender inequality is the most pervasive, since it is common among the people belonging to all ethnicities and religions. Half of the country’s total population, after all, is women. The multifarious discriminations against women are being manifested in various forms, such as under representation in the policymaking bodies of the political parties, different branches of the state and socio-cultural organisations; less wages than their male counterparts for the equal amount of works in different industries; patriarchal domination of women by male members of the family; and so on and so forth. With half of the population, some 70 million, remaining politically, economically and culturally discriminated against and, that too, at all levels, ranging from the family to the state, the ruling class’s claims of making democratic progress is nothing but a travesty of truth. However, the left-leaning political parties are particular about mentioning the need for abolition of the existing political, economic cultural systems producing and reproducing inequalities in all spheres of public and private life, but the impression one gets from the manifestos and day-to-day political practices of these parties is that the pervasive inequalities would automatically be done away with as soon as the socialists seizes state power. This is, again, an impractical ‘belief’, given the empirical experiences that the now-defunct socialist world had witnessed.For the democratic growth of society and the state, which was a promise of the country’s liberation war, there is no alternative to taking up the issue of gender equality as a regular agendum by the forces of democracy. The issue needs to be part of the day-to-day political struggle against the forces of pseudo-democracy, which have reduced the concept of democracy to a mere transfer of power through elections every five year. Democracy, after all, is a way of life, based on equality of citizens, which is to be manifested at all levels of public and private life of a populace.