4 TACKLING GENDER INEQUALITY
78. Despite progress in improving some indicators
of gender equality, for example in school enrolments and reductions
in maternal mortality, Bangladesh ranks low on the UNDP's Gender
Empowerment Measure—108th out of 109 ranked countries.[112]
This index measures the extent to which women and men are able
actively to participate in economic and political life and to
take part in decision-making.[113]
79. The way women are treated in society is also
an indicator of gender equality. According to DFID, 60% of women
in Bangladesh suffer from domestic violence at some point.[114]
Dr Hossain told us: "domestic violence is probably the single
greatest human insecurity threat that people in Bangladesh face
[…] women-based violence from their partners is among the
highest rates in the world."[115]
The fear of crime and insecurity has curtailed women's mobility
with implications for their ability to go out to work.
80. Women typically earn only 65% of the amount men
do for the same jobs.[116]
The World Bank reports that, while the gender gap in terms of
equal pay narrowed between 2000 and 2005, this mainly benefited
better-off salaried workers in the middle and higher end of income
distribution.[117]
The Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies (BIDS) points
out that women in the poorest households are worse off because
of the social dynamics: "women in poor households are marginalized
due to the societal and intra-household inequality and a lack
of empowerment in making choices."[118]
DFID's approach
81. DFID's Country Plan says that it will promote
gender equality and improvements in the status of women. DFID
is tackling gender inequality in three ways: (i) policy dialogue
with Government, other donors and civil society; (ii) targeting
through specific programmes, with sex-disaggregated data to track
progress; and (iii) helping to ensure that different budget lines
are gender sensitive.[119]
DFID seeks to ensure that women have access or are prioritised
in its education, health and extreme poverty programmes. It has
helped the government to set up a budgeting system which can track
expenditure with a gender focus and it is contributing to a media
campaign to raise awareness of gender inequality.[120]
Maternal and neonatal mortality
82. As with the provision of other basic services
in Bangladesh, maternal care is provided through government programmes,
NGOs and the private sector.[121]
Women and Children First report a reduction in maternal mortality
from 574 per 100,000 live births in 1991 to 290 in 2006.[122]
The target is to reduce this to 147 per 100,000 live births by
2015.[123] However
80% of births still take place at home without trained assistance
resulting in an estimated 12,000 maternal deaths per year.[124]
Neonatal mortality rates are also high. This is related to maternal
care since it is difficult to anticipate birthing difficulties
or babies being born in need of medical care when women have
had no antenatal care. Professor Costello from University College
London expressed some scepticism about whether the fall in maternal
mortality rates could be credited to improvements in maternal
care. He thought community mobilisation was a more significant
contributor, along with nutritional change and access to antibiotics.[125]
BRAC told us that much more investment was needed in community
organisations and women's groups which focus on maternal mortality
to encourage improvements in care provision at the local level.[126]
83. DFID pools its funding with others donors towards
a health, nutrition and population sector programme managed by
the World Bank. This aims to create improvements in health, nutrition
and family welfare especially for the most vulnerable, including
women. It says that this has increased access to antenatal care
from 48% in 2004 to 52% in 2007 and access to skilled birth attendants
(SBAs) from 13.5% to 18% over the same period. DFID believes its
programme has:
[…] reached 9.4 million poor people in urban
areas through a maternal health programme implemented by UN agencies.
This has renovated obstetric facilities and improved access by
ensuring that skilled birth attendants are there around the clock.
We have improved home based maternal and child care by training
community birth attendants on when and how to get women to hospital
if a life-threatening situation develops. In pilot areas, this
is a crucial link directly to the government voucher scheme.[127]
84. While this is commendable, we were told that
only one-third of the required number of skilled birth attendants
were in post and that many women did not use a birth attendant
even when one was available. This was due to the relatively low
status of women in Bangladesh society where many families did
not consider it worth their time or money to send mothers-to-be
to health care facilities. In households where women had outside
employment, their status increased and they were more likely to
be encouraged to use skilled birth attendants.[128]
This corresponds with the World Bank's findings that poor pregnant
women have significantly less contact with health services in
comparison to better-off women. The Bank also notes that this
did not change significantly over the period from 1996-2004.[129]
85. Professor Costello also expressed concern about
the regulation of care for mothers and newborn babies, particularly
at the local level:
By and large, the district hospitals, which often
cater for four to six million, were not too bad, and the NGO facilities
were not too bad, they did reasonably well. Once you got below
that, to union level, and remember a union still covers 25,000
people, the services were of extremely low quality, and even worse
was the private sector at that level. A lot of very bad things
were being done. There is an issue around regulation here.[130]
He suggested there was a general need to link DFID's
research programmes more closely to its country programmes so
that lessons learned from research studies could be disseminated
and applied at country level.[131]
This would also facilitate better monitoring and evaluation of
the impact of maternal health programmes and allow the most effective
interventions to be replicated in different country programmes.
86. Bangladesh has made some improvements in access
to antenatal care, and maternal mortality is declining. However
it is off track to meet the MDG for reducing maternal mortality.
The shortage of skilled birth attendants and the low usage where
they exist is a key factor behind continued high rates of maternal
mortality, especially for the poor. More needs to be done to improve
and expand maternal and neonatal care. In addition there is limited
statistical data about how and why changes are taking place in
maternal mortality rates. Government and donor-funded programmes
have made some progress but there is a weak relationship between
research programmes and country programmes. We recommend that
DFID increase and expand its funding for maternal care, including
increased evaluation and monitoring of programmes to establish
which are most effective. It should also increase its focus on
promoting the benefits of assisted deliveries, specifically targeted
towards the poorest families
Empowering women
87. Christian Aid pointed out that, despite evidence
of women's advancement in some specific areas, "women remain
largely marginal to key decision making processes and are poorly
represented in political structures at national and local levels."[132]
Sandra Kabir said that having a female prime minister had not
had any impact on the status of women in the country.[133]
Christian Aid also noted that, while DFID had a "women and
girls first approach", its main focus was in the social sectors
such as girls' education and maternal health with less attention
given to economic opportunities and decision-making. Christian
Aid believed DFID should do more to promote women's involvement
in decision-making processes for example by sponsoring women in
management roles in NGOs, the private sector and in government.
One World Action made a similar suggestion and believed that this
should become a key component of DFID's wider work on governance
and aid effectiveness.[134]
Christian Aid pointed out that poor development indicators for
women were a reflection of their lack of economic and political
power: "women lack control over income and expenditure decision
at the household level and are also limited in their participation
in decision making, both at family level and in society".
[135]
88. The Government of Bangladesh is aware that gender
disparities need to be addressed. This is included in its poverty
reduction strategy papers.[136]
Some steps have been taken. A number of seats in the National
Assembly are reserved for women. However, two-thirds of these
are not contested, creating a division between those elected in
contested seats and those chosen by their peers. Christian Aid
noted that "even when the quota system is introduced it still
leads to a form of segregation and a marginalising of women within
these decision making structures."[137]
89. Traidcraft pointed out that:
[….] while there are constitutional affirmations
of gender equality, state legislation and institutions frequently
overlook the rights of women. There will therefore need to be
a deep level of commitment on the part of the Bangladeshi government
in order to make significant change.[138]
BRAC agreed that there were many good laws which
were gender-sensitive, but the laws were not always implemented.
DFID assured us it was seeking to redress this and that some progress
had been made:
We supported a campaign with Sweden, Denmark
and Norway to raise awareness about these issues over the past
year and our support through the rights and governance challenge
fund led to a Bill against domestic violence. It is a thread that
runs right through the country programme.[139]
DFID Bangladesh has a Gender Action Plan which it
is in the process of revising.
90. Many of the problems which women face in Bangladesh
are linked to their status in society. We encourage donors to
address this more robustly. One way in which this can be done
is by promoting women's involvement in decision-making processes.
While Bangladesh already has some women in the highest echelons
of power, a programme to promote wider participation and leadership
of women committed to challenging the traditional role of women
in NGOs and businesses could make a difference to the perception
of women's contribution. We recommend that DFID take this forward
as part of its wider work on governance. We also recommend that
DFID include these objectives in its revised Gender Action Plan.
MONITORING
PROGRESS
91. It is also important to have effective measures
of gender equity. The Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies
(BIDS) suggested that DFID should adjust its approach so as to
include specific targets for women and girls in all its programmes.
Christian Aid proposed that DFID increase the use of sex-disaggregated
data so that at least 50% of indicators across the DFID portfolio
in Bangladesh were either disaggregated by sex or were "gender-sensitive".
It also suggested that DFID make gender and social exclusion a
routine part of its dialogue with the Government of Bangladesh.
Women and Children First supported these suggestions.[140]
92. DFID told us that all of its programmes were
monitored and the data was disaggregated by gender:
[….] all of the programmes that we have
actually monitor their impact, disaggregated by sex so that we
can see what we are doing on the ground and that it is delivering.
Our programmes generally in DFID are gender mainstreamed. That
is how they are developed to begin with. Then, having the disaggregation
of our monitoring can be a check on whether we are doing what
we set out to do with our programmes.[141]
However, monitoring the impact of a programme on
women is not the same as setting targets for what that programme
should achieve in terms of its impact on women. Ms Kabir highlighted
how little impact gender was actually having on policy formation
or implementation, largely because there was inadequate monitoring
and evaluation:
Policy formulation is not gender sensitive. The
same goes for the implementation of policy. At the programme level
you have the same issue; the programmes are not designed or implemented
in a way that is particularly gender sensitive […] if you
look at monitoring and evaluation, you do not have disaggregated
figures available to tell us about the impact of the health and
family welfare government programme.[142]
93. DFID's strategy for promoting gender equality
has not significantly changed the gender dynamics in Bangladesh.
We believe DFID should increase its focus on gender and begin
to consider new ways in which it can ensure that its social programmes
do more than target women as beneficiaries and that its monitoring
does more than note progress. We recommend that DFID create specific
targets for each programme in terms of the number of women who
will benefit and that it actively monitor these targets so that,
if they fall short, the causes can be identified and addressed.
Setting measurable targets is distinct from simply monitoring
outcomes. These targets should be included in the Gender Action
Plan for Bangladesh.
112 UNDP, Human Development Report, Table K:
Gender Empowerment Measure and its components, UNDP, 2009 Back
113
UNDP, Measuring Inequality: Gender-related Development Index and
Gender Empowerment Measure, www.hdr.undp.org Back
114
Q 214 Back
115
Q 18 Back
116
Q 214 Back
117
World Bank, Poverty assessment for Bangladesh, p x Back
118
Ev 54 Back
119
Ev 68 Back
120
Ev 71 Back
121
Q 52 Back
122
Ev 103. The 2007-08 UNDP Human Development Report gives a reported
figure of 320 deaths per 100,000 live births and a figure adjusted
for misreporting of 570 per 100,000 live births for 2005. Back
123
Ev 103 Back
124
Ev 78 Back
125
Q 47 Back
126
Q 51 Back
127
Ev 69 Back
128
Qs 53-54 Back
129
World Bank, Poverty assessment for Bangladesh, p 75 Back
130
Q 55 Back
131
Q 55 Back
132
Ev 61 Back
133
Q 59 Back
134
Ev 92 Back
135
Q 58 Back
136
Ev 80 Back
137
Q 58 Back
138
Ev 96 Back
139
Q 215 Back
140
Q 64 Back
141
Q 214 Back
142
Q 59 Back
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