Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday urged the women of Bangladesh to strive for realising their rights by themselves as no one else would help them in this male-dominated society.
“You’ll have to realise your rights by yourselves as no one will come up in aid of you in this society ruled by men,” she told a programme marking the inauguration of Begum Rokeya Day and distribution of Begum Rokeya Award-2016 at Osmani Memorial auditorium in Dhaka.
This year, the prestigious award was given to Aroma Dutta and Begum Nur Jahan for their outstanding contributions to advancing the cause of women in Bangladesh.
The prime minister announced to increase the number of award recipients to five from the next year to encourage women more.
“We want to turn Bangladesh into a poverty-free country. However, we won’t be able to materialise our dream if we don’t take the womenfolk to the path to drive away poverty,” she said.
Mentioning that half of the country’s population is women, the prime minister said their development is a must for the country’s development.
“If women don’t make progress in education and other sectors, this society will never be built properly. All have to understand that there’s no chance to neglect them,” she said.
State Minister for Women and Children Affairs Meher Afroze Chumki presided over the distribution ceremony.
The government introduced the award in 1995 after the name of Begum Rokeya, the pioneer of awakening women’s rights in the subcontinent.
The prime minister said the government has created opportunities for the education of women through providing various stipends at primary and secondary levels and scholarships for their higher education like graduation and post-graduation and even at PhD level.
Paying deep respects to the memory of Begum Rokeya, Hasina said for emancipation of women, the rights pioneer had taken pen in one hand while she had also engaged herself for construction of institutional structure for female education and social organisations for their welfare.
Her struggle, sacrifice, brightness of thoughts and writings are still spreading glittering lights in the society, she said.
Recalling great contributions of women during the liberation war in 1971, the prime minister said, the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu had taken massive steps for women emancipation and their political, social and economic development alongside rehabilitating the mothers and sisters who suffered immense brutalities of the Pak force and their local collaborators.
She noted that now Bangladesh’s prime minister, deputy leader of the house, opposition leader, speaker and a number of ministers are women, which is rare example in the world.
Women in Bangladesh are now working at every level of administration - armed forces, law enforcing agencies, judiciary and local government bodies to parliament, from school-college to universities and from air force pilots to the UN peacekeeping missions - and other challenging positions, she said.
Besides, their role in mass media as well as sports and games is also very much
commendable, she said.
The prime minister said her government would put more women in the positions of the administration as they are doing well there.
She hoped that her government would be able to turn Bangladesh into a middle-income country by 2021 and a developed one by the year 2041 with the co-ordinated efforts of male and female.
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