Women’s Education in Bangladesh

Where education considered as one of the vigorous tool to eliminate a country’s poverty, a
major global issue that is impacting the development of current world is lack of proper
education, especially lack of women’s education. Still the number of illiterate adults around the
world is 750 million and two-thirds of them are women (UNESCO 2017). In general, the term
women’s education can be referred as primary, secondary, tertiary, religious, health and single-
sex education for women. It involves other education as well. There is a set of arguments,
debates and issues for women’s education. Women education cover areas of gender impartiality,
relation to the mitigation of poverty. Bangladesh is a country of South Asia with highest density
of population and most of them are adult man and women. According to the recent study (2018)
the number of proportion of man and women in Bangladesh is nearly same-50.41% and 49.59%.
But in terms of literacy rate, male literacy rate is 64.57% and woman literacy rate is 58.49%.
This statistic clearly indicates the gap between man and woman education. The economic growth
in developing countries like Bangladesh is very slow due to the lack of women’s education. This
essay emphasizes on the impact of women’s education in development of both rural and urban
Bangladesh.

Gender inequality or discrimination is often seen in rural Bangladesh in term of common belief
and practise. In rural households, a common belief is man should be the only contributor to the
household income; women are born only to run households that include looking after family and
doing household chores. Therefore, In Bangladesh majority of rural people are unaware of
women’s education. Young girls, bring up as educated women in future are less likely to send
school. One or two men who considered the head of the family bear all the household expenses.
With limited income it is hard and stressful to bear all those expenses. As a result of anxiety or
pressure, they turn to involve in domestic violence. To overcome this situation the government
(education sector) need to provide proper education to male and female equally. An educated
woman will not only execute to surge household income, also pledge education of her child. She
will treat her daughter and son in same way. Also education plays a vital role to boost self-
esteem and pride among women, enhances their prestige.

Marriage plays a vital role in marriage. A number of pieces of research were conducted
on Bangladeshi girls, and most of them confirmed that their education gives them more worth in
the marriage market. One of those girls stated that she was able to make such a good marriage
because of her education; because a girl has to pay a big dowry, she didn’t have to pay because
of her education, in addition to her mother’s poverty which would make the whole marriage
impossible to proceed. Therefore, she found her self-esteem and her salvation in her education,
which led to the consummation of the marriage. Despite all of that, parents seek husbands who
are more educated than their daughters, for it is the common norm for women to be subservient,
submissive and yielding to their male spouses. This stems from the belief that a family’s stability
rests on the authority taken over by the husband, who should be more educated.

Women in Bangladesh get do not get the fair shake of education, especially those who
live in rural areas. Poor rural women get almost denied any form of formal education. They are
used, instead, as unskilled workers in other areas. A lot of factors stand between those women
and their education; to name a few, parents’ discrimination and their pigheaded, opinionated
disposition towards women’s education. Besides, the poverty of those families prevents them
from sending their girls to school, placing absolutely no importance on their education. In
addition to that, early marriage cuts years off their education, that’s due to the fact that the social
norms and traditions put a tremendous amount of importance of marrying off their girls at such
an early age, turning a blind eye to the role of their girls’ education in their future life and
professional world. Adding to that, there are not as many schools as possible for girls to attend,
making it hard to go to a nearby school.

Early marriage is considered a barrier to girls’ education. Bangladeshi laws prohibit the
marriage before the age of eighteen for girls. Nonetheless, many girls get married before that
age. According to UNICEF, about 60 million girls aged between 20 and 24 got married before
they reach eighteen years old. That begs the question; what are the consequences? The girl drops
out of school as soon as she gets married, and becomes a full-time child wife, who depends on
her husband financially and emotionally. Then, they bear and conceive children, prioritizing their
children above anything, including education.

Another barrier that can be added to girls’ education is the evident and crystal clear
violence against women and girls. According to a survey in 2005, about 80.2 percent of married
women have experienced some sorts of violence at the hands of their husbands, leaving a sour
taste in their mouths to pursue their higher education. That leads to a remarkable drop in the
number of women who hold higher certificates, leading to a number of unemployed women. The
concept of dominance exists here, that the males must dominate their weak, unemployed women.

Women’s education plays a significant role in fertility and child mortality. Educated
women tend to have fewer children their uneducated peers, causing fertility to drop by having
more power and control over their destiny and their motherhood life, and that helps improve the
relationship between the wife and her husband. Educated women have become more aware, that
they started to give birth to more healthy children, taking care of them healthily and financially;
the thing the lowers the child mortality. Moreover, educated women make the best use of
contraceptives because of their awareness, and that leads to no sudden pregnancy; making them
fully control their bearing and conceiving children. They also care about their children schooling,
making them effective members of the society when they grow up. Educated women take care of
their children’s health, offer domestic help, and provide the needed nutrition to their children.
 Poverty and distance are the destructive forces that burn education to the ground. Parents
find sending their daughters to school exorbitantly costly. School needs books, clothing and
tools, and that is a huge burden on the shoulders of those families. Parents also feel insecure and
unsure about sending their daughters to faraway schools, fearing that something bad might
happen to them. It is totally acceptable to send boys to distant schools, but girls are not allowed,
and that leads to low school enrolment on the part of girls. That high cost of education forces
parents to stop sending their daughters to school, and makes them rely on girls to do domestic
chores. That is why, girls suffer from less education attainment; increasing the gender-gap.

The government in Bangladesh has tried its best to promote education for girls. It laid
foundations for its program which is called “Female Secondary School Stipend Program ‘FSSP,
the program which was put into effect since January 1994 to empower women and improve their
status through more access to education. That program has waived tuition fees for females who
are stipend-holders all the way up to twelfth grade, besides awarding those females a stipend on
a monthly-basis for going to school. Females get fee-free schooling in addition to receiving a
financial aid each and every month. However, boys do not get such financial aids nor fee-free
schooling.

Women’s education has always linked with a purpose, i.e. employment. Women describe
education as a fast lane to get employed, or to escape the fetters of traditions imposed by their
male counterparts in the patriarch, male-dominated society they live in. some educated girls are
permitted and allowed to work in different areas and outside their homes, but despite that, the
women in the rural areas get very limited opportunities and job openings for them; they strive to
get a prestigious job, but disappointingly, they get attain little success and few jobs. Women’s
employment can be deemed a way to achieve “independence” and “confidence” and add to their
“worth”. Even the type of work assigned to those educated women is previously determined and
stereotyped, based on their domestic roles. They aspire to get into high-status jobs, well, that is in
secret; whereas in public, they declare that they can work in low-status, menial jobs. “ I want to
work as a doctor, only to ‘serve’ the sick”, said a girl, choosing the diction “serve”, because, she
basically serves at home, so her professional life is impacted by her domestic life.

In conclusion, no doubt that education is an essential factor that shapes the development
in any county. Girls are no different from boys; they should gain the same right to education.
Girls should not be perceived as lesser creatures, and that they are only created for domestic
chores. Today’s society is all about cooperation, both women and men should contribute to its
advancement and improvement.
 Bibliography

Amen, Sajeda and Mary Arends-Kuenning. “Women’s Capabilities and the Right to
Education in Bangladesh”. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 15, no.
1(September 2001): 125-142

Akhter, Selina. “Indirect Benefits of Women’s Education: Evidence from Bangladesh”.

University of Wollongong (2012)

R. Beauchamp, Edward. Comparative Education Reader. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2003

Unterhalter, Elaine and Sheila Aikman. Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for
Gender Equality in Education. Oxford: Oxfam GB, 2005

M.Ahmed. and M.Ahmed. “Bangladesh Education Sector Overview”. The Japan Bank for
International Cooperation (March 2002)

Ahmed, K.S. “Projection of Population, Environment and Costs to the State of Primary,
Secondary and High Secondary Education In Bangladesh”. Programme on Population and
sustainable Development (2002)

S., Amin. “Girls' schooling, women's autonomy and fertility change in South Asia”. Sage
Publications(1996): 184-204

Huda Chaudhury, Rafiqul . “The influence of female education, labor force participation, and
age at marriage on fertility behavior in Bangladesh”. Social Biology. Vol. 31, no. 1-2(1984): 59-
74

K. Subbarao and Laura Raney, "Social Gains from Female Education: A Cross-National Study,"
Economic Development and Cultural Change. Vol. 44, no. 1 (Oct., 1995): 105-128

Hahn, Youjin, Asadul Islam, Kanti Nuzhat, Russell Smyth, and Hee-Seung Yang, “Education,
Marriage, and Fertility: Long-Term Evidence from a Female Stipend Program in Bangladesh”.
Economic Development and Cultural Change. Vol. 66, no. 2 (January 2018): 383-415.

Sinha, Nistha. "Fertility, Child Work, and Schooling Consequences of Family Planning
Programs: Evidence from an Experiment in Rural Bangladesh". Economic Development and
Cultural Change. Vol. 54, no. 1 (October 2005): 97-128.
M. Beutel, Ann and William G. Axinn, "Gender, Social Change, and Educational Attainment".
Economic Development and Cultural Change. Vol. 51, no. 1 (October 2002): 109-134.