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Local Govt Elections

Lack of political support curbs women's inclusion National seminar told

Staff Correspondent
A lack of political support is one of the main barriers to women's participation in local government elections, speakers said at a national seminar yesterday, as data show a huge fall in the number of female candidates over past several years.
Parties' reluctance to nominate and empower their female members is seen as a reason for the decreasing participation of women in upazila and union parishad elections, they said. A paper, presented by Ranjan Karmaker, executive director of Steps Towards Development (STD), said women's participation in the 2014 upazila elections went down by 48 percent compared to that of the 2009 upazila elections.
"In 2014 upazila elections, 1,507 women took part from 458 upazilas, while the figure was 2,900 in 2009," he said, citing from the statistics of Democracy Watch.
STD and Democracy Watch are two of the four alliance partners of a project that organised the seminar, "The Status of Women Representatives in Upazila Election 2014", in the capital's Cirdap auditorium.
Addressing the programme, former caretaker government adviser Rasheda K Chowdhury blamed "money-men-muscle" for women's lagging behind in the race for winning party nomination.
Most of the party posts are held by men, so when it comes to select the nominee, women get less support, said former parliamentarian Rasheda Begum Hira.
The project, "Aparajita-political empowerment of women", funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, started in 2011 in 40 upazilas to increase women's share in local government.
Karmaker showed that a similar decline occurred in the union parishad elections. The number of female contestants fell from 1.8 lakh in 1997 to 1.24 lakh in 2003, and to 90,000 in 2011, he said, citing the Election Commission data.
Parul Nahar, a nomination seeker for chairman of Hakimpur upazila in Dinajpur this year, said the leaders of her party BNP forced her to withdraw from the election.
Elected from a reserved seat, Ishrat Jahan Sonali, vice-chairwoman of Jhalakathi sadar upazila parishad, said she did not have any decision-making power or any authority to do anything for her voters.
"When I went back to ask for votes this time, naturally my electorate asked me what I gave them in the last five years," said Sonali, who was elected twice, in 2009 and 2014.
Economist Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, chairman Palli Karma Sahayak Foundation (PKSF), spoke as chief guest.