Gender governance and women's rights

In this era of globalisation, new terms like "global governance," "corporate governance," "IT governance," "participatory governance" and many others are being invented. But, what's about "gender governance" or "indigenous governance"? People might wonder why I am trying to introduce these two terms. The reason is that post-modern philosophers have categorised the women of the world as the "Fourth World" and the indigenous people of the planet as the "Fifth World" besides the conventional division of the world into first, second and third. In this article I will focus on the concept of "gender governance."

Readers, don't get alarmed at the term "gender governance!" I am not outlining the sphere of a woman-dominated republic as Begum Rokeya sketched in her novel Sultana's Dream. In a striking contrast to Rokeya's "dream," women hold only 18% of parliamentary seats worldwide.

Bangladesh can, however, be proud because the PM, the leader of the opposition, and the ministers of home, foreign affairs and agriculture are women. But, is that enough?

Basically, the basic goal of gender equality (also known as gender equity, gender egalitarianism, or sexual equality) is to bring about equality of the genders. Only after all the requirements for gender equality are fulfilled can the march towards gender governance be commenced.

World bodies have defined gender equality as related to human rights, especially women's rights, and economic development. Unicef defines gender equality as "leveling the playing field for girls and women by ensuring that all children have equal opportunity to develop their talents." "Gender equity" is one of the goals of the United Nations Millennium Project, to end world poverty by 2015.

The history of the feminist movement has gone through different phases like liberal feminism, Marxist/material feminism or radical feminism. But how much have women across the planet actually achieved over the decades? Robert B. Zoellick, the World Bank president, recently observed: "In only a few decades, health and education levels of girls and women have improved significantly, but economic opportunity has not. Women consistently trail men in labour force participation, access to credit, entrepreneurship, inheritance and ownership rights and in the income they generate, and this is neither fair nor smart economics. Studies show that investment in girls and women yield very large economic and social returns."

But, with due respect to the WB president's observation, a state cannot be expected to attain significant improvement in women's condition until positive changes in policy are adopted. In Bangladesh, on International Women's Day, 2008, the chief adviser announced the adoption of the National Women's Development Policy, to a broadly positive national and international response.

The original policy of 1997 had been changed surreptitiously in 2004 to seriously curtail women's equal rights in financial matters, and over property, land and inheritance; and also in participating in direct elections to seats reserved for women in Parliament.

The policy amended in 2008 was broadly similar to that of 1997, other than an increase of the duration of the maternity leave provisions (from four to five months), creation of the necessary environment for increased participation of women in the foreign labour market, reservation of one-third seats in the Parliament for women, and taking steps to ensure transparent elections to the reserved seats. Women's rights activists raised questions regarding a major omission in the 2008 Policy, as compared to the 1997 Policy, regarding any reference to equal inheritance rights of women.

In an extraordinary development, the 2008 Policy was suddenly condemned by a section of Islamist groups and clerics as being "un-Islamic." On April 17, 2008, the government again amended the announced Policy with concession to the demands of the clerics (Source: Rights of Women, Chapter 14 in the Human Rights in Bangladesh 2008, p. 163-172, published in 2009). Not only that. Our state is yet to take any steps for withdrawal of reservations on Sections 2 and 16 (1) of the UN Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women - (CEDAW, ibid).

Even though we have women as PM, leader of the opposition, and ministers of home, foreign affairs and agriculture, both our state and civil society should be more pro-active in terms of making positive policy changes to ameliorate the over-all condition of gender equality, equity and governance.

Audity Falguni is a development activist.