Today is the 20th death anniversary of Nurjahan Murshid, a renowned politician, women’s rights activist, and one of the organisers of the 1971 Liberation War, said a press release.
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How prepared are our women’s right movement activists?
Once at an event, advocate Sultana Kamal expressed bitterly how the women of Bangladesh have to start their race from the very beginning, whereas their male counterparts, participating in the same race, have a starting point somewhere comfortably set in the middle. The reason behind this is painfully obvious no man faces one ounce of the multitude of the problems, both at home and at large that their female counterparts must.
Sultana Kamal did not just make a statement. It is indeed a fact that rings true around the world. And even more so for the women of this country. From the time of the British rule, the ground of competition has been unjustly biased against the women. The fight towards moving the female gender forward from this dark grasp has never been a struggle lasting a day or a handful of months. Nor has it been centred around a single individual. The struggle to move forward by any means has been, time and time a
Why is it so difficult to write about something that seems so obvious and urgent? Can it have something to do with that very obviousness itself? What if we were to switch codes for a second and change the title to Creating a safer Bangladesh for men. How absurd does that sound? Almost everyone I presented this alternate title to either smiled or scoffed, regardless of their gender. Yet Creating a safer Bangladesh for women seems entirely apt; with an endless barrage of stories of violence in the media, it almost feels as if now is the worst time ever to be a woman. As much as I clearly appreciate such concerns, however, this underlying saviour-complex bothers me to no end. Are women an endangered species that need to be kept safe in a sanctuary? It is great that we are now having a conversation around women s safety, but how about we make it a conversation about equality instead?