Empowerment of Rural Woman in Bangladesh through Agriculture

Introduction

The gender issue in developing countries again highlighted at the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 (Hicks, 1997). Women’s work in the productive and social sectors is a key aspect of development. Everyone has a unique classification of empowerment based on his or her life experiences, behavior, and ambitions, person has the power to decide about their things, their life, and their actions can be identified as empowerment. Rao and Kelleher stated that “the capacity of women to be economically self-sufficient and self-reliant with control over decisions affecting their life options and freedom from violence” (Rao and Kelleher, 1995). The disempowerment of women reflects upon their less education level income, control over their own income, bargaining power in selling their own produce and labor. This susceptible condition ended an overall dependency of women on their male relatives through their life cycle particularly in developing countries which lowers their value of life in the society.

Bangladesh is a developing country, according to the United Nations Gender-related Development Index (GDI), Bangladesh ranked 105^th out of a total of 177 countries worldwide (Grimm, Harttgen et al., 2008). A patriarchal social system dominate the life of women in Bangladesh, controls a women’s mobility, the roles and everyday jobs. In Bangladesh traditionally men dominate women in all spheres of life. The poor women in rural areas having the least power, have few rights, little choice about their lives, and very few chances to modification their condition. Women in Bangladesh in rural area are generally illiterate and often have the least to eat.

Though, despite all of the problems, women do play a significant role in agricultural activities in Bangladesh. Agricultural activities includes crop production and processing, post-harvest operations, livestock husbandry, aquaculture and agro-social forestry.

Figure – 1 The Ratio of economically active women working in agriculture, 1980-2010