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Gender

New results on how to delay child marriage

While growing up in Bangladesh, my grandmother was married at the age of 14. My mother was wed at 16 years old. Today, 2 out of 3 girls in the country are married as children — Asia’s top rate and the world’s fourth highest. Many become mothers while they themselves are still children. And yet, I’ve never been more optimistic about the future for Bangladeshi girls and their communities. When I was a teenager in Dhaka in the 1970s, women had an average of seven children each, extreme poverty was endemic and women had far fewer rights and opportunities than men. You were lucky if you lived past 50 years old. But deep investments in

Make a happy world for mothers: Speaker

Speaker of the Jatiya Sangsad Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury today urged all to work together to ensure safety and happiness for every mother and asked all to say no to all types of repression towards them. “Let’s make a happy world for them stopping all kinds of repression ... Let’s work together to make their lives more beautiful, more protected and safer,” she said. speakerShe was speaking as chief guest at an award giving ceremony - Azad Products Ratnagarva Ma Award-2015 - at Dhaka Club auditorium in the city, BSS reports. The S...

Education could cut child marriage by a third: Study

Child marriage in Bangladesh could drop by up to one-third if girls receive educational support or skills training, according to a study looking at ways to combat the practice in a country with one of the highest prevalence rates. The Population Council’s Bangladeshi Association for Life Skills, Income and Knowledge for Adolescents (Balika) project evaluated the success of three approaches in delaying the number of girls under 18 being married off. Bangladesh has the fourth highest rate of child marriage in the world. In terms of absolute C... </div><!-- .entry-content --> </article><!-- #post-## --> <div class=

Trafficked Nepali, Bangladeshi women trapped in Syria

Nepali villager Sunita Magar thought she was heading to a safe factory job in Kuwait, but only when she landed in Damascus did she realise “something had gone very wrong”.
Frequently beaten with a baton and given only one meal a day, Magar says she spent 13 months working as a maid for a Syrian household and pleading to be allowed to go home. “I was just in shock, I couldn’t stop crying,” the single mother-of-two told AFP. Magar is among scores of poor Nepali and Bangladeshi women who travelled to the Middle East on the promise of a good job, only to be trafficked into Syria, wracked by five years of civil war.

Women changing exploitative garment industry

Tuesday marked International Women’s Day, and demonstrations of solidarity or activism were held around the world. In Bangladesh, garment workers demanded equal pay, an end to violence against women, and safe working conditions. Women make up 85% of garment workers in the country, often taking home the pitifully small minimum monthly wage of $68. That is a far cry from the $113 per month that the E.U. states is needed to cover a worker’s basic needs, and well below a real living wage. Exacerbating that dismal state of affairs is the fact that many garment workers put in 60-140 hours of overtime per week, but are often cheated of the overtime pay. Many are denied

Dialogue on promoting women entrepreneurs in Ctg

 SME Division of Bank Asia recently arranged a dialogue session with Women Entrepreneurs of Chittagong Zone, where Mr. Muhammad Mijanur Rahman Joddar, Executive Director of Bangladesh Bank, Chittgong Office was present as Chief Guest and Ms. Kamrun Malek, President of Chittagong Women Chamber of Commerce and Industries (CWCCI) as special guest. The Deputy Managing Director of Bank Asia Mr. Mohammed Roshangir & Mr. Muhammed Zahirul Alam, SEVP & Dialogue PhotoHead of MSME Mr. Sarder Akhter Hamed and apex body of CWCCI we...