Women still vulnerable

Dr Najma Chowdhury, second from left, speaks at a seminar titled 'Women in contemporary Bangladesh: New challenges' at the CIRDAP auditorium in the city yesterday. On her left are Prof AFM Yousuf Haider and Angele van der Heijden and on her right is Ayesha Banu. PHOTO: STAR

At the concluding session of the national conference on 'Women in contemporary Bangladesh: New challenges', the speakers also highlighted the obstacles facing women and discussed the ways to resolve those.

The Department of Women's Studies of Dhaka University organised the two-day conference at CIRDAP auditorium in the city in association with the project titled 'Institutionalising the Department of Women's Studies' and the Association of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague.

Pro-Vice Chancellor of Dhaka University AFM Yusuf Haider attended the session as the chief guest while Editor of The Daily Star Mahfuz Anam was present as the guest of honour and First Secretary of Netherlands Embassy Angele van der Heijden as special guest.

Lauding the activities of the women's studies department, Mahfuz Anam said women activists should now try to find out ways of implementing laws to genuinely empower women in the country.

"A grand convention bringing together the most prominent women's rights organisations in the country should be held to formulate a charter of demand which should be placed before all the major political parties," he said, adding that the women's rights organisations should use their vote bank to make the big parties accept their demands.

Describing the women's studies department as a promising one, Prof Yusuf Haider hoped that the department would produce a group of young generation who will be aware of rights and gender issues.

"We have to understand the women's issues from a global perspective and act locally," he added.

Angele van der Heijden praised the quality of papers presented at the conference and hoped that the new department will sustain, as it has already become part and parcel of Dhaka University.

Founder-member of the department Dr Najma Chowdhury chaired the session while Chairperson of the department Dr Nazmunnessa Mahtab was also present.

Three sessions were also held yesterday where experts presented several papers.

Assistant Professor of the department Runa Laila presented a paper titled 'Closing gender gap! A critical analysis of primary education policy in Bangladesh.'

Three more papers -- 'A socio-economic analysis of the maternal mortality in Bangladesh', 'How marginal is marginal? Reflection in women's Status in Bangladesh' and 'Looking into the future: Allies and strategies: Women standing on their own' -- were also presented.

The papers highlighted the forms of oppression on women, remarkable progress of women in governance, strategies for women participation and partnership in politics, gender gap in primary education policy and the maternal mortality.