Untold Facts

Cart before the Horse: One Hundred Reserved Women Seats in the Parliament

Hurrah

On the Women’s day this year on the 8th March Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced in a gathering of women in Dhaka that she would have one hundred women’s reserved seats in the parliament. I can say with certainty that she had loud applause and big clapping for the announcement. That’s what the political leaders expect all audience to do; and also that she made the public declaration for having clapping and hurrah.

Why not 56%

When a friend asked me my response on the announcement, I stated without any fumbling, why not 56%? That was what the percentage figure of the women’s voters had been in the 2009 national election voters’ list. That would have been not only for women’s empowerment but also just in terms of population figure of women in the country.

Cheap Rhetoric for populism

Populism in politics is nothing unusual. Leaders need and cram for popular support of the people she or he leads. In open plural democracy, no leader can afford to ignore popular appeal. That is why all such leaders pick up issues of likely populism and go on making band wagon of the issue for people’s support to win election.

AL’s Bandwagon

Awami League, as a political party all throughout the history of their existence for about six decades now, have had very effectively gone for many band wagons for winning elections. In the 2009 December election as well they made huge promises almost all for populism but devoid of reality on the ground just as some of their stalwarts have later on admitted to. Thus the people, time and again, have been miserably cheated. Hasina’s declaration for the reserved one hundred Women’s seats in the parliament can hardly be considered anything different. Rhetoric and bandwagon seem to mark this declaration, as well, I am afraid.

Women are Disadvantaged

There is no denying the fact that women as a class is disadvantaged than men. But it also true that women are backward in all countries not only in the developing ones but also in the most developed lots. The disadvantage is thus a legacy of the past for not just centuries but millenniums. The question now is, could any one sort out the long standing and continuing inequality of genders in Bangladesh in a second or a minute through Aladdin’s wonder lamp?

Reservation or Inferiority Acceded to

The first point is ‘reservation’ in any issue itself clearly implies positive discrimination for disadvantaged, on the one hand, and appreciation of inferiority of persons/groups concerned, on the other. It is as such reasonably needed that the causes of disadvantage, if not inferiority, have to be sorted out, listed and then take on to look for possible remedies.

‘Original Sin’
Whether the disadvantage owed to the ‘original sin’ or in scheming of the Great Creator, if there was any, can not be overlooked for the simple reason that all civilized human societies in one way or the other continue to bear legacies of the belief in the Great Lone Creator.

Biology and Nature

The nature though framed both man and woman almost exactly the same in many biological functions and yet designed not for the same biological process to carry on in the same manner. The reproductive system is the best example in uniqueness of the two. The uniqueness is also so wonderfully unique that all living animals have the same difference, disadvantage, inequality and some disability, as well, of one or the other.

Inequality in Natural Design and the Need for

One may argue that despite the differences and disabilities, if not inequality, the system of polyandry and of matriarchal family systems overcame inequality of the fair sex. But the fact of human society is that they are now matters of by gone days and nowhere prevalent in advanced human societies. We are now thinking and talking about for rapid transition to fully humane and advanced society.

Human wisdom and development ahead for maximum welfare of maximum people found it reasonable to have family system having nucleus of two adult members of opposite sex. This is as essential for reproduction of the next progeny as also for bringing up babies and children in family structure of the two souls joined together to carry on these essential jobs. Wedlock in religious or other forms was considered by social planners as befitting in the matter for all adult human beings. The family so constructed also helped in framing society for congenial human relations. The sexual act has not been kept open with everybody and anybody like other irrational animals but been made conditional and limited between the agreed and lawful partners. This is not essential for sexual gratification as such but for identity of the probable next offspring that every sensible human psyche is eager to have and keep up in future. That is how humane and caring society developed having had base in major religious beliefs and scientifically organized democratic society, not making any dislocation in family system but instead integrating family bondage wedded between two souls of adult opposite sexes.

Women’s Additional Burden

In the family it is for natural reason that child bearing woman partner takes some additional specific responsibilities and functions that the male partner can not do. Breast feeding is such an example for newly born baby apart from carrying the baby in the womb of mother and not of the father. Such difference in functions and obligations made mother more for internal works than biological father. If for obvious reasons mother has to go out of home for work or for responding to any other obligation, alternate system has to provide for keeping in view that the alternate would function effectively.

Equality of Opportunity, Not Equality

Equality of opportunity is being confused with equality by many as also empowerment of women. I am afraid, there is nothing called absolute equality in creation much less in human progeny. Lately, the West after having had gone on to licentiousness of free sexuality and promiscuity for empowerment of women has been infested heavily with broken homes, illegitimate birth of children, drug addictions and all such vices leading to the killer diseases like HIV Positive/AIDS, etc that have made additional burden to the national exchequer, if one would care to account for the cost involved. One may ponder about the fact that such vices have roots in the so called ‘secularism’ or in the social practice of separation of church and state into the affairs of family system.

Poverty, Ignorance and Social Taboos

In poverty ridden countries like Bangladesh, say for example in India, the so-called ‘largest democracy’, women folk in the main are treated not only unjustly but also in all conceivable inhuman manners. The main reason has been poverty, ignorance, religious obscurantism etc. Bangladesh’s scenario is nothing different. Thus it is only though freeing people from abject poverty, making them fairly educated for being useful and productive democratic citizens and motivating them through higher ideological psyche, one may expect all not only young girls alone empowered as future member of the society and the country.

Quality Human Resource can do the Job Effectively

Once we could reach that level of capability and psyche of all people, it is only likely that all would compete between themselves, men and women, not only in the world of work but also in the election for the parliament on their own merit and capability, not to feel perked by anybody and so made pliable to some body through the provision of ‘reserved’ seats. The women, if would be rightly educated and made enough self-confident in their own capabilities, could then only and not before have more than 50% of the seats just as now the women voters are nearly 56%. Otherwise, it would be at this stage an exercise only to put the ‘cart before the horse’. One may, however, take a look in depth as to the position the women have been having now a days in the West, despite their ‘liberation’ nearly six decades ago in the mid 20th century, and many countries had Woman Prime Ministers during late last century.

Author: Dr.M.T. Hussain