Bangladesh News

Although the government has announced the much-awaited national policy for women development to ensure equity for men and women in all spheres of life, it has not fixed any timeframe for its implementation.

The caretaker government will soon start implementing the short-term programmes but implementation of the long-term ones will depend on the will of the next governments, said Women and Children Affairs Adviser Rasheda K Choudhury yesterday.

The short-term programmes include raising maternity leave from four months to five months, ensuring appointment of equally qualified women to public positions, taking steps to stop the suffering of women working abroad, and launching special programmes to help women in distress like the disabled, she told The Daily Star yesterday.

As laid out in the National Women Development Policy 2008 announced Saturday, the government will initiate a process to abolish all laws that discriminate against women.

Key features of the policy include reserve one-third parliamentary seats for women and arranging direct election to them and enacting new laws to ensure equal opportunity for and control on all earned movable and immovable properties.

But the policy does not elaborate the point on control over property and say anything specifically about inherited property.

Rasheda Choudhury said legal experts who will deal with the matter would have to consider the issue not only for Muslim women but also those of other religions.

Also aimed at ensuring women’s security at national, social and family levels, and empowerment in political, social and economic sectors, the policy advocates ensuring women’s participation in bodies to be formed to formulate new laws and amend the existing ones.

Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed formally unveiled the policy on Saturday while addressing a function marking the International Women’s Day.

Asked about the timeframe for implementation of the policy, Rasheda Choudhury said, “It is not said there in the policy. There have been confusions regarding the policy for a long time and we have tried to remove them.

“There are some short-term steps, some mid-term and some long-term ones. We will immediately initiate the short-term steps while the next governments will have to take strong mechanism to implement the long-term policies,” she said.

A clause on ensuring women’s active and equal participation in all economic activities says women should be given equal opportunity to property, employment, market and business.

To achieve the goal of women’s economic empowerment, necessary laws should be enacted to ensure equal opportunity to health, education, training, vocational training, information, income opportunity, property, debt, technology and market management and control over moveable and immovable property earned through market management, according to a related clause.

Besides suggesting one-third representation of women in parliament and direct election to those seats for women’s political empowerment, the policy suggests increasing the number of the reserved seats to ensure women’s increased participation in parliament.

“Increasing the number of reserved seats and direct voting is already under consideration of the government,” reads the policy, which also advocates steps to increase reserved seats in all tiers of the local government system.

It suggests that the political parties should encourage more women to join active politics to pave the way for participation of more and more women in national and local body elections. It also suggests making women aware of their voting rights.

The policy also suggests appointment of adequate number of women, if necessary, under related sections of the constitution to the highest level of the cabinet division and the policy-making level of the administration.

The policy advocates establishment of women’s human rights, their salvation from the vicious circle of poverty, elimination of discrimination against girls, ensuring adequate nutrition for them and providing enough support to help bloom their aptitudes and talents.

It suggests equal participation of women in every national economic activity beside their male counterparts and proper reflection of women’s household works in national statistics.

The policy also advocates constitutional provisions, if necessary, for appointing women in policymaking bodies in the administration, especially at the highest cabinet level.

There should be effective measures so that women can be appointed in foreign missions, universities, the University Grants Commission, the planning ministry and higher positions in the judiciary.

Stressing the need for addressing matters related to women’s health, nutrition, environment and participation in the mass media, the policy suggests that special attention should be paid to the unfortunate woman victims of circumstances.

It also suggests that the government make coordinated efforts at the national, district and grassroots levels and work with national and international non-government organisations to implement it.

Asked about the discriminatory laws, Rasheda Choudhury referred to the Citizen’s Act that has several rules that discriminate against women who marry foreigners.

“There were also discriminations against women in case of distribution of khas land,” she added.

Ain O Salish Kendra Executive Director Advocate Sultana Kamal said nothing has been mentioned clearly about three issues related to women’s rights–full ratification of CEDAW, uniform family code and equal right to inherent property.

She said as per the constitution and civil laws, all men and women are entitled to have equal rights, but in practice there are a lot of discriminations, which could be reduced greatly by having these three issues in place.

Sultana Kamal, also a former adviser to a caretaker government, said the issues of private or personal matters are said to be dealt by family laws that are actually influenced by religions.

“Women in different religions get different shares of properties–equal in some religions and less in others. Our demand was to formulate a uniform family code giving women equal rights. The issue was not made clear in the policy,” she told The Daily Star.

Women’s movement leader Maleka Begum, who was involved in preparing the Women Development Policy 1997, said the newly declared policy does not say anything about the formation of a national women commission proposed for implementing the policy.

She said besides family laws, there are many other laws like the citizenship law, guardianship law and the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act that have discriminatory clauses.

Although female workers, especially those in the garment sector, play a very vital role in the country’s economy, they are not given due salaries, promotion and maternity leave and are treated in discriminating ways at workplace, she said.

The policy suggests raising allocation for women in the national budget to meet all their needs including food, clothes, housing, treatment and education.

The first women development policy adopted in 1997 had advocated direct voting to the reserved seats in parliament and equal opportunity and share to property, employment, market and business.

But the BNP-led coalition government made some amendments to the policy in 2004.

After expiry of the tenure of the coalition government, women and rights organisations demanded reinstating the provision of direct election to the reserved seats and protested insertion of “constitutional rights” in place of “equal rights” in the policy.