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Farm credit thru' women to empower them CPD dialogue told

Staff Correspondent
A city dialogue yesterday recommended channelling farm credit through women as a measure to further quicken the process of women empowerment in society.
The dialogue on 'Women's Contribution to Rural Economic-Activities: Making the Invisible Visible,' was organised by leading policy think-tank the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).
It focused on the contribution of women both in farm and non-farm economic activities and urged both the government and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to formulate an explicit gender strategy targeting rural women as equal stakeholders with men.
Agriculture Minister MK Anwar,
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State Minister for Agriculture Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir and Awami League's Agriculture Secretary Mohammad Abdur Razzaque, MP, spoke as the chief and specials guests at the dialogue held at BRAC Centre Inn. CPD Trustee Board Member and Brac Chairman Fazle Hasan Abed chaired it.
Social Science Division Head of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Dr Mahabub Hossain and IRRI Gender
Specialist Dr Thelma R Paris
presented two keynote papers,
also co-authored by Dr Manik Lal Bose and Alamgir Chowdhury, at the dialogue. CPD Executive Director Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya delivered the welcome address.
Presenting a detailed paper on the changing roles of women in rural economy, Dr Mahabub Hossain concluded that agriculture credit should be channelled through women as has been the case in the NGOs channelling large portion of microcredit through women.
The government should initiate special project for training women in improved agricultural technologies and programmes for supporting women's income generation activities around homestead should be expanded for households, both poor and otherwise, he added.
Dr Mahabub, also former director general of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), observed though an overwhelming majority of women in Bangladesh were engaged in multi-disciplinary activities from homemaking to poultry raising, all on a part-time basis, only six percent of them participated in economic activities on a full-time basis.
He also said about a third of the adult women does not participate in economic activities.
Dr Paris gave an account of women's farm engagements, saying that women in Bangladesh are involved in winnowing rice, threshing paddy, drying crops, husking and boiling paddy and
seed management and storage. Besides, she said, women's roles were vital in the areas of cleaning animal shed, rearing ducks and chickens, planting trees, growing vegetables and fish production.
"Stereotyped notions that rural women are housewives should be discarded and replaced by the recognition that their roles in production and their contributions to family income are crucial for improving the livelihoods of the household," she noted.
Designated guests of the dialogue largely agreed with the papers' observations and recommendations and assured that the government would make policy interventions to further empower women.
The participants in the dialogue included, among others, GM Kader, MP, former ambassador MM Rezaul Karim, women-rights activists Maleka Begum and Khushi Kabir, Dr Salehuddin of Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation, academics Sadeka Halim, Meghna Guha Thakurta, Roushan Jahan, Rushidan Islam and Salma Zohir of BIDS and Director General of Department of Agriculture Extension Tariq Hassan.