“Breaking Barriers: Women's Career Challenges in Bangladesh”

Today Bangladeshi women enjoy much more access to education than their counterparts of the Bangladesh war generation, yet female representation and access to higher positions in the workplace remain limited. More and more women graduate with good CGPA from different universities proving that this category is a potential, yet women remain less active in the labor market. Besides, even when they manage to get employment, women are also locked out of promotions. This phenomenon remains an indication of both cultural and social issues as well as systemic barriers to women’s economic activities in Bangladesh.
 

Some of the main causes why there are still women who are jobless in Bangladesh include the following- the discrimination of gender in recruitment. Even today more and more women are educated and want to work, many employers still have such ill attitude towards women and still stereotype their roles in jobs and even promote men more than working women, especially in top administrative positions. For instance, research has proved that the prejudicial attitude of a large cross-section of the population is in favor of men having more rights to employment than women as the societal notion of the role of women being within the four walls of a house. Furthermore, women are discriminated against being expected to have other domestic duties to attend hence the probability of her frequenting her home. It means that while men had a poor employment rate in industries and services, the situation is even worse for women who cannot easily find employment even in those areas due to restrictions on mobility and safety in rural areas.

Another important factor is a shortage of paid workplaces that would satisfy women’s preferences, such as shifting schedules or safe places to work. According to the quarterly survey of “The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, between October and December last year, the number of unemployed male workers decreased by 80,000, to 15.7 lac, while unemployed female workers increased by 1.2 lac, to 7.8 lac”. This has destabilized women’s employment by denying them quality employment thus rising female unemployment despite increased education levels. According to the Daily Star, “Women are also more likely to work part-time, with 35.4% of female employees working part-time compared to 28.7% of males”.