Why is women’s political participation still so low?
While women should make up a third of any political party, as stipulated by the Representation of the People Order, except for five parties, no other political party in the country has the required percentage of women's participation. Although reserving 33 percent of the committee positions for women is a prerequisite for any political party to be registered with the Election Commission and this requirement should be met by 2020, with only nine months for the deadline to end, most of the political parties have not managed to meet the requirement. What is more, only four of the parties have women as their heads, including the Awami League and the BNP. Our reporter has talked to leaders of 25 out of the country's 41 registered political parties and found a rather dismal picture of women's participation in these parties.
What is most shocking is the fact that even the ruling AL has only nineteen women in its 74-member central committee, meaning that only 26 percent of the committee positions are held by women. While the BNP has 11 percent women's participation in its advisory body, the Jatiya Party seems to have no data on women's participation in the party. However, five parties, including Gono Front, Zaker Party and Jatiya Ganatantrik Party, have claimed that women constituted 33 percent of each of their central committees.
Given the situation, we need to find out precisely why our political parties have failed to achieve the goal set some 12 years ago. Clearly, the issue was not given much attention by our political leaders because of their patriarchal mindset which still makes them doubt the necessity of including women in the party, let alone in the various committees. According to women's rights activists, women members of our political parties generally do not have any decision-making power and they are always looked down upon by their male counterparts, which definitely discourage the educated and intellectually active women to come to politics. Such attitudes of our political parties must change if we are to bring more women into politics.
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