Amartya Sen hails role of women’s agencies for cause of women

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Nobel laureate Prof Amartya Sen has spelled out the evaluation of women’s movement across the globe, with women’s agencies playing active role in broadening the initial focus on better treatment to equal rights for all.

The role of women’s agencies must be more concerned with women’s well-being, he said, adding that an active agency of women cannot ignore the urgency of rectifying many inequalities that blight the well-being of women and subject them to unequal treatment.

The necessary social change would have to be brought about through women’s education and economic and social roles relating to strengthening of women’s agency, he said while delivering Salma Sobhan memorial lecture at the 20th founding anniversary of Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK) yesterday.

The first Bangladeshi Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus, philanthropist George Soros and ASK Executive Director Sultana Kamal also spoke at the founding anniversary function chaired by ASK Chairperson Fazle Hasan Abed at National Museum auditorium.

Amartya Sen stressed the need for strengthening agency as a means of making human rights more powerful and fulfilled. He said the limited role of women’s active agency seriously afflicts the lives of all people — men as well as women, children as well as adults.

Appreciation of the women’s agency involves an important evolution of the basic nature of women’s movements across the world, the Nobel laureate said, adding that focusing on the agency role is central to recognising people as responsible persons.

Paying tribute to the memory of Salma Sobhan, the founding executive director of ASK, Amartya Sen said she had brought about a remarkable enrichment of the gender perspective and feminist understanding of social inequalities in Bangladesh and also elsewhere.

“She had fresh ideas to offer on the importance of human rights including the rights of women. She also had much to say on the ways and means of fighting against and overcoming social injustice.”

Sen found similarity between the agency perspective and recent success of women’s movement and the importance of taking an adequately broad approach to human rights.

He recalled the role of Mary Wollstonecraft who has been quite central to both the theory of women’s agency and development of an adequately broad view of human rights in general.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof Muhammad Yunus underscored the need for local government for resolving dispute. “If the dispute resolving process at the local level is made effective in any part of Bangladesh, that will open up a new dimension in the administration,” he said.

Appreciating the role of ASK in helping the poor section in the society, Prof Yunus said poverty can be overcome through removing deprivation. Yunus also formally launched the ASK 20th anniversary commemorative report.

He said thousands of clients of Grameen Bank who are very poor and live in the village get legal help and assistance from ASK.

Yunus expressed hope that ASK will continue its assistance to the neglected section in the society.

George Soroj appreciated the role of civil society in Bangladesh. “Although Bangladesh is known as a poor country in the world, its civil society is very outstanding which is an example of others to follow,” he said.

He hoped that ASK, which has worked for upholding human rights during the last 20 years, will continue its efforts in the future.

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