Nilima Jahan

The Covid-19 pandemic has negatively affected women more than men in terms of monetary and other losses, economists and women rights activists say.

Have you ever imagined how many disposable pads a menstruating woman or girl uses in a year or how much they actually cost?

Thirty-one-year-old Mushfika Akter, a teacher at a renowned school in the capital, is currently in her eighth month of unplanned pregnancy.

Holding a placard inscribed with “I am a volunteer. How can I help you?” Sagarika was waiting at the entrance of Dhaka Medical College Hospital’s Covid-19 unit. As soon as an ambulance arrived, she rushed towards it, helping the patient get off from the vehicle.

Ashikuzzaman Khan, a computer engineer, who was injured in the deadly fire in Old Dhaka’s Armanitola on April 23, died on Wednesday night while undergoing treatment at Sheikh Hasina National Burn and Plastic Institute.

The government project undertaken to prepare the country’s first-ever poverty registry has not been completed in more than seven years, with the data collected for it already rendered useless.

Thirty-year-old Aklima Akter of Mirpur’s Duaripara slum shares her tiny and slippery “hanging latrine” with over 80 people in her neighbourhood.

Although the practice of open defecation was declared 0 percent in Bangladesh in 2017, 22-year-old *Nishita Nisha, a member of the third gender community in Dhaka, said that she is still sometimes forced to defecate in parks, footpaths or alleys.

The government has enacted the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act in 2010 that ensures the victims’ rights to law enforcement officers’ assistance, required medical facilities, and legal services.

When her husband faced a huge pay cut a month after the outbreak of Covid-19, advocate Noorjahan Kabir was left with no choice but to step forward to help her seven-member family.

Compensation for rape victims and their family members remains elusive in the existing criminal justice system, with a clear mandate absent in the relevant law, say legal experts.

24-year-old Shirina Akter, who is employed at a ready-made garment factory in Savar’s Nishchintapur, works around 10 hours every day to manage her family of five. But during her periods, she cannot always work for such a long time, and is forced to skip work on the first or second day.

After her father died, around two years ago, Rimu came to the capital from Jamalpur and started working at a readymade garment factory.

Showing the handmade card she made for her elder sister on her 17th birthday on October 9 last year, eight-year-old Reana Asif (not her real name), the younger sister of an English-medium school student in Dhanmondi who died after rape, said, “I will not spare the scoundrel who killed my sister. I want justice.”

Whenever there is an incident of rape, most people tend to say that it was the girl or woman’s fault, and question her character, social class, outfit, sexual experience, and lifestyle.

Most days of the week, Jagannath University student Ayesha Nijhum is seen sitting in an open field near her house in Gazipur’s Kapasia. The second-year student of management attends online classes on her cellphone for about two hours and prefers the field over her house due to the better signal reception in the open area.

It was not the family reunion that she had hoped for.

“Do you want to earn Tk 20,000 per month working from home for only two hours a day?”

Until Sunday night, the sidewalks in front of the Jatiya Press Club were teeming with protesters pressing their demands for various causes, but since yesterday morning the area has been deserted.

The news on rape of a 14-year-old intellectually impaired girl at a disaster shelter, in Pachgachhi union of Kurigram Sadar upazila in 2018, did not make it to the headlines of major newspapers or outlets, but it offers a glimpse of the vulnerabilities women and girls face during natural disasters.