A city that had over 50 canals and lakes only three decades ago, Dhaka has currently lost almost all of its water bodies. Over the years, most of these water bodies have been snatched by land grabbers and some have been used to dump massive quantities of garbage from nearby areas.

Sara Ansari is delighted. She can finally drive in her own country thanks to a recent change in reforms in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The changes have just begun to take effect; Sara, however, has been holding a license for a couple of years. She got it from Saudi Arabia's neighbouring country, Bahrain, and would go there every weekend, just to drive around and have a good time.

Our country is developing quite fast, except for one thing, gender equality. The men of our country do not yet totally support it but do our women support it fully? In our country, it is thought that women can't do everything like men.

It is rare for women to be at the top, period. And even rarer for that woman to have worked their way to the top—more commonly, those who hold privileged positions often inherit their family businesses. Here, we feature women in diverse industries who have worked their way to the top, in a man’s world.

I listen in abject horror as my three-year-old comes back from school one day and proclaims that his playtime with his afternoon neighbourhood playmates will now consist of “the boys on one side and girls on the other”. My carefully constructed gender-equality declarations and almost repeated bad gerings over the past few years on his swiftly developing brain seems to have collapsed in one session of rough

Tania Sultana, a 23-year-old sewing operator at “Esses Fashion Ltd.” of BEXIMCO Textiles can now take home her compensation for 30 days of work at the end of the month, but it was difficult for her to do so just a few months ago. She was not always able to make it to work, especially on heavy-flow days when she could not work for 8-10 hours at a stretch. Since unsanitary rags were Sultana's only recourse, she would find it impossible to wash and

Last time, I wrote about how Dhaka's public spaces exude a strong maleness and how women walk about the city wearing their gender like the proverbial albatross that just would not unburden their shoulders. How does that weigh on men? I would say heavier!

Though the government has made an announcement to recognise our gender identity as "Hijras" or "Third Gender" in 2013 and promised to rehabilitate us by appointing 12 of us in government jobs in the first phase, they have failed to keep their promises so far. When we were going through the medical tests for the job, the doctors of the government hospital refused to touch us and instructed their assistants to strip

International Women's D­­ay is entering its 108th year. Debates and discussions inevitably ensue each March about women's long journey through the years. This year, however, I want to introduce you to some of my life partners. These courageous women have been my friends and have slowly but surely been leaving their mark on my own life, changing me for the better. They give me the strength to stand strong, and dream of a better, more egalitarian future.

It was the evening of September 2016. A brilliant display of attacking football by Marzia and Co helped Bangladesh's Under-16 women's team come back after conceding an early goal to beat their closest group rivals, Chinese Taipei, in the Asian Football Confederation's Under-16 Women's Championship Qualifiers. The intense finish sealed the girls a spot in the much-coveted final round of the Championships.

How do we define empowerment? What is it like to feel empowered? Is it possible to feel empowered, all the time? Empowerment these days is a buzzword for development practitioners (including myself), the unquestioned “good” aspired to by women in local communities and grassroots levels.

Hello dear reader. You may be a feminist, a boy, a woman, or just flipping through. We are no longer in a situation where individuals can win by themselves. People need to be organised, and organise themselves, their peoples. Many communities have been organised decades now for their...

Through Nilima Jahan's article, published in the Star Weekend on March 2, we got to know of the misdeeds of the police. Actually, this department is completely corrupt, you cannot hope to get a single service from them without greasing someone's palm—whether you are having your passport made to perform Hajj or want a police clearance certificate to go abroad. Last month, when the “Passport Service Week-

2018 was supposed to begin on a positive note for 65-year-old stone worker Jahur Ali. Jahur had received an assignment to extract a huge pile of stones—more stones than he had collected in the recent past and that meant more money.

A contemporary art exhibition to celebrate friendship and unity of countries with Bengali katha embroidery

I met Sabah Tani back in 2012 when I was asked to be one of the judges for the initial audition round of a TV music reality show. It was a fascinating experience, being a first-timer in something of that sort. I got the opportunity to visit all eight divisions of Bangladesh in 25 days, which otherwise I would have neither the strength nor the time to do. Our primary job was to listen to contestants sing and decide

"Which university do you want to go to?” I wrote down on a notebook. She circled the word “university” and weakly asked in a shaky voice that barely rose above a whisper: “What does this word mean?” Maisha will be graduating tenth grade in less than a year from a reputable institution in the city, but her performance at school lags behind her peers'—as can be seen from the absence of the word “university” from her vocabulary.

In the first part of this series the Star Weekend revealed, how huge amounts of waqf (an endowment made by a Muslim to religious, educational or charitable cause) properties in Bangladesh have been completely grabbed by illegal occupiers. We found that 122,294 acres of endowed estates are now under illegal occupation and Bangladesh government's waqf administration has lost control over 90 percent of these estates.

As one of the youngest sons of one of the heirs (called the nine sharers) of the Dhaka Nawab family, I thank your correspondent Md Shahnawaz Khan Chandan for this story last week. Just recently, when family members on my mother's side went to visit the waqf state in Savar, they were severely abused and chased away by the people living there on disclosure of their family's identity. The Nawabs of Dhaka, even

Opinion on pranks is divided strongly among two groups. There are those that think it is hilariously acceptable. And then there are those that have been pranked. Unlike a good knock-knock joke, a prank requires we laugh at someone. There needs to be a victim at the proverbial butt end of the ha-ha. Is there a right and wrong way to do it? Can you learn it the way you can learn how to fly a plane? Possibly.