Women's commission report: Right ideas, wrong approach

The Women's Affairs Reforms Commission submitted its report to chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus on April 19, recommending measures for elimination of discrimination against women and attainment of equality with men. Although the commission's overall aims are admirable, several of its recommendations appear out of sync with Bangladesh's socio-economic and religious context that made them controversial and difficult to implement.

For decades, women's empowerment has been central to Bangladesh's development narrative. Quoting the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, the report itself noted that 56 laws, policies and regulations are already in place to protect the rights of women and children. In recent years, women's workforce participation has brought about tangible economic and social progress which is widely welcomed across society. Even with these improvements, harassment and violence against women continue to occur in public, at work and at home. It was within this reality that the commission had got an opportunity to propose workable and carefully-thought-out solutions. Regrettably, the commission's report lacked the foresight to be tactful, risking being perceived as provocative by a large segment of the population and potentially dooming its recommendations before they gain traction.

One such contentious recommendation is the decriminalisation of sex work and its recognition as a formal profession. While the intention may be to reduce shame and abuse, the recommendation ignores the mountain of data connecting prostitution to coercion, trafficking, and severe physical and psychological harm. Most countries in the world including the USA, Russia, and China either outright ban or drastically restrict prostitution. Legalising it as a conventional profession also contradicts the report's own stance on forced sexual relations within marriage, which it classified as rape.  Given that the commission acknowledges consent is important in one situation, how then can it endorse an industry where actual consent is often absent?

Equally impractical is the commission's proposal for gender quotas in corporate boards and media outlets. Drawing on Norway's decision to gradually implement gender balance on company boards from mid-2024, the report calls for at least 40 per cent female representation in policy-making bodies of private companies, government agencies and financial institutions, along with 33 per cent representation across all levels of the mass media. Common sense dictates that the board composition of private businesses and the workforce composition of media outlets should be decided by employers. Mandating quotas for females can easily be perceived as undue interference in their operations, and the feasibility and legality of such impositions would likely be highly questionable. Imposing on Bangladesh what a single Nordic country is beginning to implement as a test case, after achieving near parity in employment rates between genders, could provoke backlash and appear more like state-enforced tokenism than organic progress.

The report also makes sweeping recommendations regarding political representation. It proposes a 600-seat lower house with 300 seats reserved for women, alongside equal representation in an upper house. Such a system is without precedent in any existing model, be it the Westminster, presidential or semi-presidential form of governance. Under the current arrangement, 50 parliamentary seats are reserved for women. However, these were often filled by female relatives of influential politicians, and many such MPs have made little contribution beyond reading speeches from some notes in parliament that have been a source of public amusement. Reserved seats, at best, should have been a temporary measure to encourage inclusion. Unless the female parliamentarians effectively advocate for women's rights and opportunities, which they did not, expanding these provisions would only cause an unnecessary drain on limited government resources.

Perhaps the most divisive recommendation in the report is the call for a uniform family code to ensure equal rights for women in marriage, divorce, guardianship and inheritance across all religious communities. As a rationale for this proposed code, the commission briefly asserted that religious doctrines are inherently discriminatory and must be amended. Although the commission suggests the code would initially be optional, the underlying perspective adopted by the commission puts it on a direct collision course with the religiously conservative population of Bangladesh. For the overwhelming majority of Muslims, inheritance laws are based on the Holy Quran, which is regarded as the literal and unaltered word of God. The prescribed shares and rules of inheritance are thus viewed as divine mandates, and any proposal to alter this is likely to be perceived as infringements on faith. There are also socio-cultural dimensions to consider. Sons receiving a double share of assets often bear increased responsibilities as they are traditionally expected to care for elderly parents, an expectation not typically placed on daughters. Any change in this delicate arrangement must originate from within communities, not imposed from above. Forcing the issue through legislation before public opinion sees it as a matter of injustice would be premature and counterproductive. 

There are, however, some sensible recommendations in the report that deserve serious attention. These include establishing day-care centres, building hostels for working women, forming sexual harassment prevention committees, digitising registration of marriage and divorce, and providing psycho-social counselling services in educational institutions. These measures address practical barriers that could meaningfully improve women's safety and mobility.

However, there is a significant risk that these valuable recommendations aimed at genuinely empowering women will be overshadowed and ultimately buried under the weight of the controversy generated by the more contentious proposals. Predictably, the report has already faced pushback from religious and conservative groups.

This outcome could have been avoided had the commission focused more squarely on practical, actionable reforms grounded in the everyday realities of women's lives. Not every battle needs to be fought at once, and lasting progress often comes through gradual, strategic steps. The Women's Affairs Reforms Commission was uniquely positioned to deliver a blueprint for progress, one that could have secured tangible gains for women. By overreaching and ignoring societal realities, it may have undermined even its most reasonable proposals. Should this report fail to translate into action, the blame therefore will lie less with those who resisted change and more with those who failed to recognise what was politically possible.

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