Photo:Internet

In Bangladeshi society where women struggles to find out a platform for themselves among the opposite sex, there are few women who really want to break the conventional practice and want to flourish their in their own field by defending the male dominance.

Aneela Haque is one of the pioneers of Bangladeshi fashion today with her fashion outlet AnDes. She is also one of the seven founding members of Bangladesh Fashion Alliance that organised the first Bangladesh Fashion Week in 2004. Her designs speak of the traditional Bangladeshi handicrafts and are influenced by different cultural motifs, for instance, fiery dragons from China, the hieroglyphics from Egypt, elements from Africa, Paris, India and also various elements from rural Bangladesh. “My clothes and garments are like a passport to the world” Aneela says. Among the well known designers, Aneela Haque has represented her own designs for the first time at the three-day Bridal Asia event held at the Taj hotel in New Delhi in October 2008.

Rubaba Dowla Matin is working as Head of Marketing & Deputy Director, Commercial Division, GrameenPhone; one of the leading cellphone company in Bangladesh.She is one of the few leading female executives in the top echelon of the corporate world of Bangladesh.She is a woman of style as well as substance.She said that “There is no such thing as a man’s world. A self-motivated person should never think about gender issues and about any constraints related to gender. She should be positive minded, and believe in dedication, hard work, competency, and performance.” She has received many awards for her outstanding contribution in the field of marketing of the corporate world.

As the other two mentioned above has been heavily highlighted by media and personal effort, but the one I would be talking about now is a silent contributor to the society, working relentlessly behind the scene.Shabnam Azim is a lecturer in the Mass Communication and Journalism Department at Dhaka University. Being a student of Viqarunnisa Noon Girls School, she was a gifted child who excelled in her education achieving star marks in her SSC and HSC examinations. Shabnam’s hard work paid off and she was awarded the Sumitomo Corporation Scholarship for her outstanding HSC results. Then in 2008 Shabnam formed Inner Eye Communications, an event management and public relations firm, with three other friends, all of whom were from the same background of mass communications. She said, “We all think on the same level and thus it is very easy for us to work as a team.”

I believe that the disciplined life and vision for success is a key factor in overcoming the barriers in the road of achievements of women. I think acknowledging women’s merits alone and encouraging them to move forward will help women to achieve more in their lives.

Photo: Internet

Every morning on my way to my class, I see many women dressed in either salwar kameez or saree on their way to work, waiting for a CNG, CAB or sitting on the back seat of their car. They dressed quite elegant yet simple and professional, with their hair neatly groomed. Women, particularly in our society are expected to be house wives, taking care of the house hold chores and bringing up their children. But nowadays, quite a number of women taking care of their house hold duties are working. Few years back working for women only meant to teach at schools, but today the scenario is totally changed. Women today are working as bankers, telecom professionals, lecturers, etc.or are running their own ventures quite successfully. Many designers of different fashion houses are women and are promoting their designs by their own event management firms. Or they are opening up their own fashion institute or interior design schools where many students are enrolling.With so many private TV channels & radios opening up in our country, we women choosing their career in the mass media and communication. Lot of women are seen choosing journalism as their profession, not to mention they are already doing good as presenters and news caster. Also, after opening up of the radio channels we see many female singers are now releasing their albums under different record labels. Due, to all the opportunity around women seems to be one step ahead in choosing what they want to do professionally.

As women entrepreneurs, we see women are leading in the fashion world. Many of them owning their own fashion house, beauty salons, and also advertising firms. I was really surprised to learn few days back that the managing director of one the shipping company in Bangladesh is a woman. I am really proud and happy to let you all know that Mrs. Afruja Bari is the managing director of the one of the first shipping building companies in Bangladesh to get ship export orders from abroad. Experts believe that ship building industry will be the next top foreign currency earning sector in the near future. So, we see that women are not behind anymore though they are facing hardships and challenges everyday.

Photo: Internet

In a country where everyone has an opinion about everything, no matter whether they understand the subject matter or not, it’s not surprising that we have a very active political field. In Bangladeshi society it seems like that women are in a good position in the political arena. Our two leading prime minister and leader of the opposition in Parliament were women.However, their high positions in politics do not reflect the whole scenario of women’s position in politics. Both the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition were from political families which helped them to get into the leadership when there was a vacuum. The leading parties brought them in front and used the public sentiment to keep the party intact.

Since Bangladesh is an agriculture based country, with a Muslim majority, it is not always appreciated that women are considered as leaders. There is a common mentality of males dominating over the females. As a result of that, a lot of qualified women can’t make it in politics on their own. Of course there are very few exceptions to that. Gradually women’s participation in politics is increasing. Usually, they would be entering for promoting the issues which are unique to women only, i.e. women’s rights related issues. They have been pretty successful in furthering the cause of women starting with the women’s education back during the British Raj to current day worker’s rights.

The constitution of Bangladesh provides for formal equality of men and women.Women are entitled to the same fundamental rights as men. Article 10 of the Constitution ensures participation of women in all spheres of national life (Bangladesh constitutional amendment, 1979, article 10). Article 65(3) provides for reserved seats for women in the parliament and article 9 promotes the special representation of women in local government (Bangladesh constitutional amendment, 1979, article 65). Besides the participation of women in politics and urban governance, many programmes have been undertaken in local governments.Women comprise more than half of Bangladesh’s population. If there is ever going to be progress in any field, they need to be part of it. So, it is important to give proper acceptance and representation to women in the fields of politics.

Today we have women politician in our “Advisory Board” in Care-taker Government.The increasing political involvement has inspired women to contest for the Rural Union Council and Urban Municipal election (there are 1/3 seats reserved for women) more than before.Women’s participation in politics at national level and at local level is very much needed to strengthen democracy.

Photo courtesy: Internet

Portrayal of Women in Film and Drama :

Film is the strongest mass medium which portrays the society. Drama is also plays a huge role in the societal context. But recently I found that our Bengali Film has lost it’s heritage and dignity that it had before. The entire film industry is being used as a mechanism of violence and sexual oppression on women in different ways. In majority films, women are presented as a sexual commodity.Moreover, the Bangladesh film industry has attained notoriety for being vulgar by focusing on women as sex objects. The portrayal of women in dramas and films is usually negative. There are rarely some films where the women are shown in a very decent manner. In the drama named “DOLLS HOUSE” women are shown as strong protagonists.

In the field of drama, women are shown as a devoted wife or mother, innocent or victims, vamps or sex workers, physically disabled or morally wrong person. They are hardly shown as professionals or achiever. The only constructive things they engage in doing are happily cooking meal after meal for their family, love men, cleaning the household things and a caring mother or sister etc.

Always depicting women in stereotyped roles may lead women in society to think that this is life and they may come to accept this as the way things are. But this is not the actual state of women in Bangladesh, mostly in Dhaka. Now a day’s women are becoming more self conscious and carrier-oriented. Women are not born only to cook and they should not be shown as commodities in the film, drama or in any kind of advertisement. Women have proven themselves in every field of communication. They play different roles including homemaker, caregiver, sister, pilot, journalist, doctor, photographer, reporter, film maker, artist and many more.

Photo: Internet

Representation of women in Advertising:

Advertising is a huge field in Bangladesh. Women are presented in many different forms in advertisements.But they can be divided into certain categories.

One category of adds are such were women are just used to get attraction. They are used to get people to watch the add and also to buy the products. In these kind of adds, the role of women is of no use, it’s just there to get attention.

Another category is where women are presented in sari’s, taking care of children and homes and waiting upon their husbands when they come back home from office. This is considered the ideal role of women. These type of ads face a lot of criticism from the feminists but they still remain.

However, there are some ads where women are shown as working women. This type of ads show that the thought process has slightly changed the viewpoint on the role of women. A Banglalink advertisement where a young girl was a journalist is a good example of such a change. However, even in the ads where women are shown as working, their main priority seems to be their home and how they balance work and home.

Still, this is a welcoming change and it is hoped that more ads where women are portrayed as independent personailities capable of taking care of themselves will be produced.

Photo: Internet

A Daily Star columnist, Mamun Rashid wrote a very interesting article on the “Shifting Roles of Women”. Women’s role in Bangladesh has changed over the years. Yet there are some things that hasn’t changed. And women’s role in their household is one such thing. Whether a woman is a housewife or is working, it is still expected that their first priority would be taking care of their home and children. As a result women who are working face a lot of dilemma and immense difficulty in maintaining balance between their home and work as the men still think that the household is still the women’s sole responsibility. A very few number of spouse contribute to the household chores of their wives. The column written by Mamun Rashid is an insightful article which very beautifully presents the present condition of the urban women today. I found this article very interesting as well as touchy. Hope you all enjoy reading it too… Here is the link-

 http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid= 61704

The transport services currently provided by the public and private buses are insecure, unreliable, congested and unsafe. It is difficult for women to compete with men for the limited space on the buses particularly given the cultural background in Bangladesh.The working women need more buses during the office hours.

The main problems for women are absence of a well-scheduled bus system, poor accessibility due to overcrowding and inadequate sidewalk and pedestrian facilities etc.In the absence of adequate transport system, many women are forced to depend on more expensive, private and para modes of transport or spend more time walking to their destinations.

Many women’s education opportunities have been restricted due to the inadequacies of the existing transport system of Dhaka city. For many poor families transportation costs are simply unaffordable.Sometimes young commuters faces sexual and verbal harassment in the road. The combination of unsafe,unaffordable and inaccessible transport system has almost certainly put heavy constraints on female commuters.

Currently only the Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) addresses the concerns of women in transport  by introducing the special service for women during the peak hour.The existing route of the ‘women only bus service’ covers the major university and the government offices. So,it is very difficult for women to travel in the city.Thus theurban women of Dhaka city are facing mobility constraints in their own land!!!

Photo: Internet

If women are abused in their own homes, it is of little surprise that they are abused outside their homes. Many women are victim of verbal and even physical abuse at workplace.

There are many jobs were women can only hold a certain post. They are not promoted above that. That may be termed as discrimination but to me, it’s no less than abuse. The nightmare for a woman starts when she is asked to make certain compromises in order to get her promotion.

Even without that, male colleagues use terms for their female colleagues which can be said to be verbally offensive and is nothing less than sexual harassment. Male colleagues, many times bosses make passes at women in workplaces. This makes it difficult for a women to do a job. Some women put up with these harrassment and take this as a part of their lives but not all can do it. This is an issue which is very sensitive, but which needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

Photo: Internet

Domestic violence or disturbance refers to violence between spouses or spousal abuse but can also includes co-habitants and non-married intimate partners.It is perpetrated by both men and women. In cities all over the world, girls and women feel most unsafe alone in the street and home as well.Although the women have become empowered in recent years, there is still a long way to go for the women in Bangladesh.They are still subject to different forms of abuse including psysical abuse,emotional abuse,intimidation,economic deprivation and threats of violence.

Sociologists say that the home of the women are the most unsafe place for women.Many women are now victims of these kind of abuse.Their feelings are repressed,their opinions remain unheard in their homes.If something goes wrong in the household the women are blamed for it.This way,the women are constantly under mental pressure.It compromises the health,security and dignity of its victims.

Many women living in Dhaka city are sometimes beaten by their spouses even their in laws.This is very  unfortunate that inspite of the women have become educationally and economically very powerful,yet they are subject to many types of violence.

Dress habits are a reflection of one’s culture,beliefs,values,attitudes and lifestyle.In Dhaka,this colorful attire keeps changing with the evolution of tastes,ones needs and comforts as well.The ideal dress for a Bangladeshi woman is saree.Materials for saree include Jamdani.Moslin,Cotton,Kota,Silk etc. Rajshahi silk,Shifon,Jorget,cotton are the most common fabric.A very popular dress they wear is Salwar Kameez.But in most parties saree is still the most popular dress to wear.

Jeans,T-shirt,Long Skirt,Fotua,Tops are widely used by the young generation.Needless to say,some of them are majorly influenced by the Western Culture.There are also a growing number of fashion houses in Dhaka who makes trendy clothes for women.As Bangladesh is a muslim society,many women wear “Borkha” to cover themselves.