Abstract:
To bring meaningful social changes and improved quality of life in Bangladesh - both
men and women should get equal opportunities and positions complementing each other
in every sphere of life. Though the Constitution has guaranteed that there should not be
any discrimination between men and women on gender basis and provisions are also
included to ensure equal rights, yet, political empowerment remained elusive and
representation of women in state legislatures remained very low. In the absence of
proportional representation even after three decades of independence, it became
imperative that reservations of women seats on proportionate basis should be accepted
as a starting point to bring women into the mainstream of political activity. In this
circumstances, the recent amendments to the Union Parishad Ordinance (1997) - the
provision for direct election of women to one-third reserved seats in the Union Parishad
have changed the women representation scenario at the local level. In the 1997 Union
Parishad election more than 44,134 female candidates contested in 12,828 seats with
1000 women competing for the general seats in 4,276 unions. Out of that, 26 female
candidates were elected chairmen (the number has increased up to 29 through by
election). This massive participation of women in elections to a political institution is a
landmark in the institutionalization of women in politics.
This study therefore, attempts to highlight and analyze the community's perception
towards these women members in local government and how far these women members
are fulfilling their expectations. It also analyzes the reason as to why the female
members are failing to serve as agents for bringing changes in the life of rural women.
The study emphasizes on communities opinion for finding out the means to improve
women's social, legal and even economic status in the study area.
During this study, it is observed that maximum women respondents in the study area are
having minimum literacy. Now they are more thoughtful about their future and are
anxious to get vocational training and different development programs to improve their
quality of lives. Though the female members could not satisfy the expectation of the
community women, yet most of these women believe that the female members can bring
changes in their lives. They strongly believe that the female members can solve their
social problems by playing an important role in village Shalish. The women in the study
area have opined for wider participation of the poor and other women in the decision
making level and demanded the female members to ensure corrective effort to make the
best use of resources in the interests of the poor especially the women.
On the other hand the female members in the study area are in a disadvantageous
position as they have to work against the male dominated traditional system. Male
members are not enthusiastic to extend their co-operation to the female members. Some
time they create obstruction for female members to utilize their constitutional rights.
Moreover, weak educational and lower social status make themselves less confident
about their rights. At the same time the male members and the local people neglect their
decisions as well. At the end, from the community point of view, we can conclude that
to empower the female members in rural local government, it is a must to bring
constitutional changes to give these female members equal power in response to male
members and there has to be a equal power balance in rural Local Government.
