A woman-friendly budget

"Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness." ~Erica Jong.
MALIHA (age 16, but not her real name) does not know what national budget is, because she is illiterate. She was married at 11 and became a mother at 13. Her rickshaw puller father died in a car accident on the day of her birth. Because of her father's death on that day, neighbours have called her olokkhi/opoya (unlucky) ever since. She still has to bear this name for her father's death on the same day her child Momota was born. After her husband's death, Maliha earned money working as a rice mill helper. On a rainy night, the mill owner had sex with her in exchange for one kilogram of rice as a gift and his promise to marry her. Maliha believed the man and their sexual relationship continued; she became pregnant. Upon hearing of her pregnancy, the mill owner beat her mercilessly and informed people that Maliha was a prostitute. The people also insulted Maliha, but thanked the mill owner for chasing her away. Maliha thought of killing herself but for her daughter's future, she changed her decision and cried for her bad luck.
Now, Maliha and her daughter live on the city streets without food, sometimes with a piece of bread, and eat remains of others' meals, collecting them from the drains and garbage piles. She looked for a job as a household help, but the homemakers she contacted refused to employ her for being pregnant and having a child. While I talked to Maliha on the street, Momota, malnourished, was crying for food.
The fact is there are thousands of unfortunate girls and women like Maliha in our country and we need to feed them as part of ensuring their human rights and rehabilitation from hunger. Can they not demand a women-friendly budget to help them live a dignified normal life? Of course they have the rights to demand and our constitution has given them those rights. The Constitution of Bangladesh ensures equal rights to all citizens, prohibits discrimination and inequality on the basis of sex and strives to promote social and economic equality. Specifically, with respect to women, Article 28 states "Women shall have equal rights with men in all spheres of state and public life."
Our national budget should be women-friendly to benefit vulnerable and disadvantaged women. Our budget's aim must ensure the creation of employment and shelter, food, nutrition and education security for poor girls and women. In excluding them, we cannot reach any mainstream development goals.
So, dear honourable ministers of concerned ministries: On behalf of all helpless girls and women in our country, like Maliha and her daughter Momota, I humbly request you to kindly allocate them adequate money simply for a normal life with normal daily food.
The government's national budget is a legal document passed at the national parliament. That is why every parliament member of each constituency is responsible for looking into its constituents' interests, especially poor girls and women, to fulfill their five basic needs to live: food, cloth, shelter, education and health services. The government is accountable to them as it is to everyone. Professor Daniel Tarantola, of the University of New South Wales, Australia, has warned that global warming will indirectly affect people of developing countries, making them more vulnerable to death and severe ill health from HIV/Aids. Experts identified certain factors interrelated to climate change that can help kill more people infected with HIV/Aids.
Factors such as poverty, illiteracy, proximity, malnutrition, unemployment, slum housing, and highly mobile populations are closely related to climate change and may contribute to large number of deaths from Aids. So, the time is now to work sincerely and seriously to save the valuable lives of poor girls and women from poverty, hunger, stalking, violence and disasters. Girls and women are human beings too, and stakeholders of the state. So, poor women and children should be included in the national budget, which should be gender-sensitive. Simone de Beauvoir appropriately wrote in her book, The Second Sex, "One is not born a woman, one becomes one."

Parvez Babul is a Journalist, Convener of Bangladesh Climate Change Journalists Forum, and author of Women's Empowerment, Food Security and Climate Change. Email: [email protected].