Can women get rid of poverty?
Women are more susceptible to becoming poor when they lose male earning members of the family because of abandonment, divorce, disability or death. Once women become poor, they face greater obstacles in overcoming poverty because of lack of economic assets, human capacities, mobility etc, notes Mamunur Rashid
March 2005 is very significant for women mainly for two reasons: Firstly, the 8th March is International Women’s Day, and secondly, the UN sponsored ‘Beijing + 10’ conference is taking place in New York to share and review progress made in the last ten years after the ‘Beijing + 5’ conference. Different women’s issues are being discussed attentively. No doubt all issues concerning women are important. But for countries like Bangladesh, poverty definitely is one of the number one issues. And when it comes to relate to women, it becomes simply critical.
As in many countries of the world, in Bangladesh the majority of the people living below poverty line are women. In addition, the gap between women and men caught in the cycle of poverty has continued to widen in the past decade, a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘the feminization of poverty’. Women living in poverty are often denied access to critical resources such as credit, land and inheritance. Their labor goes unrewarded and unrecognized. Their health care and nutritional needs are not given priority, they lack sufficient access to education and support services, and their participation in decision-making at home and in the community are minimal. Caught in the cycle of poverty, women lack access to resources and services to change their situation. Various national and international initiatives have been taken to chuck out poverty, but how far have they really managed to achieve? Are the women well-off today? Let us find out the fact.
Poverty is usually recognized as a multi-dimensional problem involving income, consumption, nutrition, health, education, housing, crisis-coping capacity, insecurity etc. Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world. According to the Government and UNFPA reports, in Bangladesh, around 47% of the people are poor and 31% are hard-core poor. The Gender Development Index of UNDP in 2002, ranked Bangladesh 110 with an estimated earned income of PPP US $1150 for females and PPP US $2035 for males (PPP or Purchasing Power Parity means, $1 has the same purchasing power in the domestic economy as $1 has in the United States). This means, women are the poorest of the poor.
In Bangladesh, the total number of poor women is higher than that of the men. The traditional society of Bangladesh is permeated with patriarchal values and norms of female subordination, subservience, subjugation and segregation. These consequences result in discrimination of women at birth leading to deprivation of and access to all opportunities and benefits in family and societal life, thus putting women in the most disadvantageous position. Various micro studies indicate that the hard-core poor are largely women. Women wage earners in poor households eat only 1.3 meals a day compared to 2.4 meals eaten by men. Women are more susceptible to becoming poor when they lose male earning members of the family because of abandonment, divorce, disability or death. Once women become poor, they face greater obstacles in overcoming poverty because of lack of economic assets, human capacities, mobility etc.
In Bangladesh, female-headed households are the poorest of the poor. Socio-economic changes triggered by increasing rate of landlessness have had a profound impact on women’s lives. According to a governmental report, the number of landless households increased from 943,000 in 1992 to 1014,000 in 1996. Percentage of female-headed households increased from 13.1 to 14.4 in the same period. The percentage of de-jure and de-facto female-headed households is increasing, particularly among the poorest section of the rural population, due to male migration, desertion and divorce etc.
According to UNDP’s Bangladesh Human Development Report 1998, female-headed households tend to be much poorer than average: over 95% are below the poverty line and one-third are classified as hard-core poor.
Women of all ages experience poverty differently from that of men of various age groups. It differs in terms of nature, intensity and response during emergency period, etc. Though a larger number of poverty alleviating programs has targeted women as vulnerable groups, most of these programs did not address underlining causes of poverty for which poor women are unable to reach out1he vicious circle of poverty. They do not have equal right to property with men and are routinely discriminated within the household in allocation of resources in terms of food, education, health care, shelter and workload. Women bear a disproportionately greater burden in managing household production and consumption under conditions of severe scarcity. Nearly 76% of women fall under the category “poor” in terms of income and resource endowments (Source:
Government’s Fifth Periodic Report to the UN CEDAW Committee, Jan 2003). Female workers are routinely discriminated in wages, especially in non-formal sectors. For the same amount of work, a female daily laborer gets at least 30-50% less than what a male laborer gets.
The development goals of Bangladesh relate mainly to eliminating absolute poverty, reducing income inequality, achieving economic growth, and ensuring social justice. Poverty reduction is at the core of development initiatives in Bangladesh. The GOB, in this respect, has drafted an Interim-Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (l-PRSP) to form the basis for government actions and donor assistance for Bangladesh. The l-PRSP titled “A National Strategy for Economic Growth, Poverty Reduction and Social Development” gives special focus in the planning and resource allocation process, through which women at the grassroots level will be largely benefited. Changes in policy focuses to address poverty over the period reveal that it has been changing from a pro-welfare approach to development approach since the last two decades: Recently, it is advocating for integration of rights-based approach, though it is still at the conceptual level. Poverty alleviation at operational level is being dealt as a cross cutting theme. All development sectors directly and indirectly do have poverty alleviation focuses. It is also true that poverty alleviation has received special attention in some sectors like rural development, industry, agriculture etc.
In the 2002-03 fiscal year, the government has allocated almost 43% of the total development expenditure for poverty reduction strategy. The Fifth Five Year Plan (1997-2002) gave special focus on extreme poverty and food security of women. Vulnerable Group Development Program (VGD) is probably the largest development intervention that extensively targets vulnerable segments of women. The female beneficiaries are selected from the economically vulnerable and socially disadvantaged women who are in real terms landless. A large number of hard-core poor women are able to earn their livelihood through self-employment by means of such programs. It is a multi-donor assisted project covering more than 500, 000 hard-core poor rural women.
During 1991-2002, Department of Women’s Affairs and Jatiya Mahila Sangshtha implemented 32 poverty alleviation projects, which were directly and indirectly involved in reducing poverty of women. The total number of beneficiaries was 1303360, who were involved in credit and vocational training programs. In 2003-04 ADP, the government has allocated 1k. 345 crore for empowering rural women through micro credit.
Recently, under the social safety net program, the government has increased the allowance for poor widowed and abandoned women to 1k. 150 per month and has doubled the number of beneficiaries at Union Parishad and Paurashava level. The government is also working to increase women’s access to labor market in both formal and informal sectors. With a view to enhancir1g women’s knowledge and skill, girls’ general education has been made free up to grade XII. Technical and vocational training facilities have also been improved.
However, in spite of the different interventions taken the situation has not improved as expected and there still remain major challenges that need to be taken into strong consideration. For example:
• There is a lack of reliable statistics to measure the extent of poverty of women. Poverty analysis, monitoring and evaluation mechanism should include gender disaggregated information as far as possible.
• Reaching the poorest requires extra investment of time, effort and money. Poor women have specific needs and concerns, which are different from men. This should be reflected while formulating policies and implementing programs and activities.
• The coverage of governmental poverty reduction programs is quite inadequate in the context of the number of poor women in the country. The budget of the ministry of women and children affairs for poverty reduction is also not adequate.
• Credit program with minimalist approach is not convincing since poor women’s rights are not well addressed in this process. Micro credit programs need to address the issues of micro enterprise. Low capital generating credit program has low potential to generate re-investable resources. Women under micro credit programs largely face such problems.
• More collaboration and coordination within and among GoB agencies are needed. It is also required to welcome NGOs’ complementing roles at a large scale in this field. Poverty alleviating programs need more cooperation and coordination between the government and NGOs.
• In Bangladesh, women do not have equal rights to property with men, which is a major factor contributing to their poverty. Discriminatory personal laws should be removed through uniform family code to address the underlying cause of poverty.
• Gender perspective of poverty and strategies to overcome it are not well addressed in the l-PRSP. This should be seriously dealt with in moving from I-PRSP to PRSP.
• Government is relying on faster economic growth to halve the figure of population living in poverty from 59% in 1990 to 30% in 2015. GDP growth rate in the last three years clocks 5% on average due to poor governance and weak public institutions. But requirement is 7% if poverty is to be cut down to below 25% in line with the MDGs.
In today’s world, women’s advancement is considered to be imperative in the discourse of development. However, the vicious cycle of poverty continues to suffocate all attempts towards development. Various plans and strategies for poverty reduction have been undertaken in the country. But these have frequently left out women. Hence, those involved in the policy-planning and decision-taking process need to realize that development in the real sense can by no means be achieved without the inclusion and participation of women. To achieve that, poverty is the first thing that needs to be squarely dealt with. Government, political parties, civil society and development practitioners - all have to take concrete and combined steps to get women rid of poverty.
The writer is programme officer, Steps Towards Development, Bangladesh
Journalistic clichés
I have never authored a book, but I do feel like writing one about their use of cliches and platitudes as substitutes for meaningful statements, and other curiosities of our English journalism, writes
Hafizur Rahman
No one can say we are not innovative, or even inventive, where the English language is concerned, as I had occasion to point out some months ago. It does not matter if, as a nation, we don’t have any great scientific or technological ingenuity to show. Those of us who write for the English newspapers make up that deficiency by forging new idioms and new expressions, and even coining new words.
I shall not try to recount our splendid performance in this field because I do not want the English-speaking foreign community in Pakistan to feel small if they have failed to make any contribution in this regard.
The trouble is that the well-educated British are taught to be wary of cliches, while our inventiveness has mostly been in this genre. Our government leaders are particularly fond of them and believe that, in the absence of solid achievements, the people are well beguiled with cliches and platitudes.
The British in Pakistan are, therefore, not driven by the desire to add to the existing storehouse of cliches, and may even be chary of using those that are already part of their language. On the other hand, we go on designing new ones, and we then see to it that they don’t go out of use.
Perhaps one of the greatest of our home-made cliches - launched and kept afloat by journalism - is the set of seven words “and remained with him for some time.” This is invariably used when a prominent personality from abroad calls on the president or the prime minister.
Some reporters also employ it when these VIPs call on lesser personages, but I am sure the inventor would frown on liberty being taken with his product through this indiscriminate use.
I have questioned many journalists who employ this set of words every day. These newsmen are basically from the two news agencies and state-run radio and television. I wanted to find out why they do so. Why do they have to say that the visiting VIP “remained” with the president or head of government “for some time.”
Their explanation is simple, reasonable and perfectly valid and throws new light on some hitherto unexplained nuances of press reporting. They contend that unless these words are used the impression might be created that after making the formal call the distinguished visitor did not come back and stayed on indefinitely.
I had to agree that such an impression would not do. Apart from causing worry to the friendly foreign government involved, the public would be well within its rights to ask what had happened to the visitor and what he was doing in the President’s House or in the office of the prime minister all the time.
The situation would become all the more mystifying the next day when the same VIP would be found making more calls, say on the Senate Chairman or the National Assembly Speaker, without having come back from his visit to the head of state or the chief executive.
There is another cliche attached to the stories of “call on” as they are referred to in official protocol circles. And that is, “They discussed matters of mutual interest.”
Again when I asked the reporters concerned why they have to use this phrase half a dozen times every day, they put me a counter-question. They asked, “Then what shall we say they discussed?” They surely caught me on the wrong foot.
There is a story behind the set of words “and remained with him for some time.” Long ago, probably in the mid-sixties, Qazi Ahmed Saeed of Radio Pakistan was press secretary to President Ayub.
On a visit to Lahore the president took time out to meet a local politician of some importance. When the president was flying back to Islamabad the pressmen at the airport got after Qazi Saeed to give them some details of the meeting. This he was unable to do as he didn’t know anything himself.
So they asked him to tell them at least how long the meeting lasted. This information is considered vital in political reporting as it gives some idea of its significance.
Cornered by the reporters, Qazi had a brainwave and said, “You can say he was with the President for some time.” This was the beginning of this senseless phrase to which its equally senseless popularity gave it historical status.
Nearly forty years have passed but the seven words have not lost their shine and utility. Day in and out they are rubbed in by the journalists without even pausing to give thought to what they are saying when they employ them.
This meaningless phrase is also frequently used in the news bulletins of radio and television, in English as well as in Urdu and the regional languages. Grim-looking desk men in newspaper offices who can otherwise shatter the ego of ace reporters by making mincemeat of their scoops, accept it without a murmur.
This set of seven words “and remained with him for some time” is now an integral part of English journalism in Pakistan. And if Mr Guinness were to pay attention it might make it to the Book of World Records as the longest-running cliche in history. It’s a wonder and a cause of constant surprise to me how British newspapers manage to do without it.
I am sure this column is not going to make any difference to the ability of this masterpiece in absurdity to survive. At least another 25 years is the minimum that I give it.
By that time the English used in our newspapers will have anyway lost its resemblance to the Queen’s English and many more cliches will have become part of the journalists’ repertoire.
Meantime, till he died some time ago, Qazi Saeed, unperturbed by the monstrosity that he had inflicted on the English language, continued to dispense free homeopathic medicines to the citizens of Islamabad.
I have confined myself to the two journalistic cliches because those used by our politicians and government leaders would make too long a list to fit into a column of this size.
I have never authored a book, but I do feel like writing one about their use of cliches and platitudes as substitutes for meaningful statements, and other curiosities of our English journalism.
This article has been published by arrangement with Dawn
COUNTER-POINT
Alleged ‘New York Times’ slander
After a flurry of actions to apprehend the fundamentalist zealots, belonging to the recently outlawed radical groups, they seem to be fizzling out, especially in the face of strenuous objections by and cacophonous squabble between the two partner Islamist parties of the BNP in the 4-party alliance, writes Omar Khasru
This is in reference to the 16 February 2005 op-ed page Taj Hashmi article (NYT drama and Bangladesh) . The response to Eliza Griswold’s depiction of Bangla Bhai and other fundamentalist transgressions and excesses (The Next Islamist Revolution, NYT Magazine, January 23, 2005) has largely been similar off-the-wall overreaction, a combination of denial and scathing attack, in a section of the local press and among some of the columnists.
They, like Mr Hashmi, seem to look at it mostly as part of a conspiracy hatched against Islam and or Bangladesh. There have been plenty of snide comments about Griswold’s lack of knowledge on Islam or Bangladesh. She may not be an expert on either but the nitpicking on her, to an extent, smacks of the old American credo, ‘If you don’t like the message, shoot the messenger.’ The crux of the article is known to most enlightened Bangladeshis and seems written largely without prejudice or favour. Like Gandhi’s three monkeys, the detractors apparently refuse to see, hear or speak about the manifest, prevalent and rising Islamic fundamentalist evil in Bangladesh. Most reactions seem to have a Pollyanna tinge with strong anti-American overtones and nuances.
God knows there is plenty to carp about American policy and the Bush presidency. But to let religious dogma interspersed with strong anti-American bias permeate and dictate everything in life and almost everything one sees and slanted writing is not proper. It is difficult to imagine the New York Times, avidly anti-Bush and anti-Republican and ardently liberal, conspiring with the US administration or anyone else to undermine Bangladesh through a damaging and damning article. The blinkered overreaction is tainted, tilted and tinted by fated prejudice, penchant and loathing.
As the government was busy in a customary denial of the allegations in the meticulous Eliza Griswold article, three Bangla Bhai cadres were killed by an incensed mob in a northwestern Bangladeshi village when the fanatic fringe group allegedly attempted to murder a prominent local Awami League leader.
The atrocities of Bangla Bhai, including maiming and killing of those with alternative viewpoints, according to press accounts, are heinous, pervasive and ghastly. The press reports also indicate that the fanatical group received patronage and support from some law enforcers and a few government bigwigs. The typical refutation of the ruling party in terming the accusations unfounded, motivated, mendacious and embellished was followed by the gruesome murder of the former Finance Minister, Mr. Shah AMS Kibria.
The government functionaries, including a few big shots, who were questioning the very existence of Bangla Bhai surely had to eat crow’s meat when police arrested Dr. Ghalib, banned two extremist Islamist groups and ordered the capture of Bangla Bhai, evidently under intense pressure from donor countries and aid agencies. This gave credence to the belief about the prevalence of extremist fringe elements in the country. This gives credence to Griswold’s assertion of fundamentalist crime and largely absolves her of any malicious motive. If the Prime Minister’s 10-month old instruction to nab Bangla Bhai were carried out, some of it could have been avoided.
After a flurry of actions to apprehend the fundamentalist zealots, belonging to the recently outlawed radical groups, they seem to be fizzling out, especially in the face of strenuous objections by and cacophonous squabble between the two partner Islamist parties of the BNP in the 4-party alliance. If the BNP relents to their pressure in order to shore up the electoral alliance, the party will someday surely rue the ineptitude, apathy and negligence.
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