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Parliamentary Elections

85pc people think more women should run for general seats

Reveals nationwide survey

Staff Correspondent
Around 85 percent of the country's people think that the political parties should nominate women to run in parliamentary elections for general seats for their empowerment.
In a five-month survey conducted over 3,565 people across 40 districts of the seven divisions between April and September this year, 70 percent of respondents said the system of reserved seats had failed to empower women.
Titled "Empowering Women Through Reserved Seats in Parliament: Fight or Flight Response?", the report was launched in a city hotel yesterday.
Khan Foundation, a non-government organisation, conducted the survey with the assistances of Institute of Democracy and Human Rights and The Millennium University, with 35 percent of respondents being female and 65 percent male.
Analysing the last nine general elections, the survey says around 20 percent of the nominated women won from general seats, while it was 18 percent for males. But only two percent of the candidates were women, while only 53 women were nominated to run the elections directly, and 214 women were elected from reserved seats.
The low figure of female contestants from general seats indicates that reserved seats have made women more and more dependant instead of empowering them and encouraging them to compete with their male counterparts, claims the report.
Consequently, this is marginalising women rather than empowering them, it says, and recommends that political parties should reserve at least 30 percent of nominations for women in general seats and raise this figure gradually to 50 percent.
The survey claims that the constitutional provision of 50 reserved seats for women had apparently failed to ensure gender equality and political empowerment of women.
So, there should be a provision earmarking nominations of women from general seats alongside reserving 33 percent of posts in the executive committees
of political parties.
Participating in a discussion on the findings, the speakers said political parties must take steps to increase the number of women contestants for general seats.
BNP Standing Committee Member Moyeen Khan presided over the programme, while Awami League lawmaker Hafiz Ahmed Mazumder, British High Commissioner in Dhaka Robert W Gibson, and former adviser to a caretaker government M Hafiz Uddin Khan among others spoke.