 Fy enw i'n gweithio, wrth gwrs, a fawr i'n gweithio i'r Soweis. Fawr i'n gweithio i'r 2nd ymgyrchol yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru 2019. Yn ymgyrchol, mae'n gweithio i'r profesi Sohella Nazanin, yng Nghymru yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru yw Susyx. Mae'n profesi o'r relasiwe yng Nghymru, i'r Unifredig Fyfoedd yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru yng Nghymru yng Nghymru. Yn ymgyrchol, yw Edward Simpson, yng Nghymru yw ymwyntio ym Ysgrifennu Ffwyloedd Swyafol, ac yn rhaid i'r cynnig sy'n credu ymwysgol ymwysig ymwysgol ymwysig ymwysgol ymwysgol, ymwysgol ymwysig ymwysgol. A gweithio ymwysgol ymwysgol, ymwysgol ymwysgol ymwysgol ymwysgol ymwysgol, sy'n gwybodd ar y cwestiynau antaraeth o'r eu cyfnodol, o'r unig o'r ffordd o'r cyfnodol. Mae'r unig o'r cyfnodol yn cyfnodol yma yma sy'n cyfnodol wedi'i ymgrifiadau 7. Yn y gweithio'r lefio, mae hynny'n gweithio yma, i'r ysgolwyd o'r cyfrifodau sy'n gweithio'r cyfrifodau sy'n gweithio Siwyddon, yn cyfio'r cyfrifodau i'r bwysig i'r cwestiynau Siwyddon, i'r cyfrifodau i'r cwestiynau Siwyddon, ac rwy'n gwybod i gweithio'n gweithio cyfnodol y Llangodes Cymru yn y rhan o'r rhan o'r rhan o'r rhan o'r llai oherwydd y Llangodes Cymru, y ddaim yn y ddweud yma yn y ddweud y South Asia. Yn y ffroffes yn Neslun, mae'n gweithio'n ddau'r pwysig i gyd, a'u gweld o IDS, a'r ddweud o'r Llangodes Cymru mae'n bwysig i'r rhan o'r llai oherwydd yma. Fe'r dyfodol yn cyfnodol ar gyfer gender, sylfaen, yn ymhylch, ac yn y dyfodol, ac mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n ddweud oherwydd gwaith oherwydd y gweithio a'r ffeminism ar y dyfodol, oherwydd i gweithio, mae'n ddweud o gweithio'n ddweud o'r rhaglen o gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio, y ddweud o ddwygen a medri ac oedd o'r ddweud o ddweud o ddweud. Felly, mae'r aethau ymlaen i'r ffordd yn yw'r ysgolwyddiadau o'r ddwygen i ddweud i'r ddwygen i ddweud o ddweud i'r ysgolwyddiadau, a'r ddweud i'r ysgolwyddiadau, yn y rhaid. Felly, mae'n fflaesio yw'r hyn yn ystod o'r profesi Nasnid. Felly, mae'n fawr i'r ddweud i'r ysgolwyddiadau, a fawr i'r ddweud i'r fod y bydd ynw'n gynnar. Mae'n aml夫wch yn rhan yn ystod o'r profesi Nasnid. Mae'n ddweud i'r ddweud i'r llwlad cael y 40-55 isglwyddau. Mae phobl iawn i fynd i'r ysgolwyddiadau sy'n cael dweud o'r rhaid, i'r unig i ddim yn cael eu dyluniaeth digistog o gyllug o'r lleidiau yn ar gyfgrifwydd ddweud i'r barf. Felly, mae'n bethau bod yn i'r wneud i gynnod f紹 a phobl iawn. well I've just come from there you'll be going there to the Brunai Gallery which is the adjacent building where we'll have tea and cake to which I'd encourage you all to come and to ask questions of our lecturers if you have them. So Professor Nezney thank you. Thank you. Thank you Edward and thanks to the 7th March Foundation and also SOS for inviting me to give this lecture. mae'n iedda i gael i'r amser a'r gweithio i'r gweithio ym Mhwyr, ac yn ychydig yma i'r Sefnodd, a fyddo sydd wedi'u gweithio gweithio yma, a'r adnodd yma yw'r Ffarnin, pharwydau, Lleithwlad i'r Ffarnin yn ei ddefnyddio ar y cyfnodd ei wneud i'r unig, felly iawn i'r rhai fyddi a'r unig. Dwy'n meddwl, yna'n gwybod i gynnig y bydd ymgyrch. Ac mae'n gweithio'r cyfnodd yma, yng Nghymru, o naddwg gwrth gweithio gweithio. Mae gweithio gweithio'r ddau, oedd ddewch yn ddweud, ddweud ei fod yn gwneud, ddweud yna gweithio'r ddweud. Mae wedi gweithio'r ddweud, oherwydd mae'n adnodd cyllid, oeddwn yn gwneud. Ond mae'n cyffredig yllysig am y ddweud, mae'n gweithio'r ddweud, a'n oedd y pethau y gweithio'r ddweud yn yndigad. A oedd yn dweud y ffrannu'n ei gweithio'r ddweud, if you look at maternal mortality, or if you look at fertility rate dropping, if you look at where Bangladesh started from and where it is now, it's been lauded for these kind of games, and it did quite well comparatively if you look at the South Asian region itself. So there's been a lot of praise recently for Bangladesh in terms of doing well, and not just only in social development, but also talking about women's empowerment itself yn ddiwedd i ddweud y rheswm, yn gwirioneddを ddif ei ddaraffu, mae'n sgwrs oedrai ar y syniol. Mae'r sgwrs y bydd y bydd, yn y ddweud yойr y Llyfrgell Llyfrgell, yw eu boterach, maen nhw'n sgwrs oedraeth, ond oedraethu yr yw mae'r peirio. Yn y cwm ydyn nhw'n drwy gweithio'r sgwrs, Rhaid gyd y bwysig 이런 o'r rhaglen. Ac mae'r cybl oedrach yn gweithio.teokbokki o'r porirau gennym o'r gannig. Rhaid i'n ddiolch ei wneud. A gynnyddio gennym unig gennymам a bwysig nhw'n eu drafodol. Gynnyddio'r brifio ar gael'r maenach gwirio arbwrth mewn gwneud. Ych chi'n gwybod o fewn y gweld yn maen, boblant, ar gyfer am gyflym am ar-i-fell. Gwydwch ar gael y bwysig nhw? Ych chi'n gweithio arbwrth gwyboli, Mae'r ffordd yn lleonio ei wneud o'r gyfalu o'r eu cyfalu neu o'r wneud o'r ymddangodau. Mae'r ffocws ar y cwyl uchel yw ymddangodau. Wrth y cwylw i'r Llyfrgell i wneud o bwysig o'r gwaith bwysig. Mae gwneud o'r lawr o'r mewn gweithio gofo o'r hyn wych flynywedol. Dwi'n maen nhw'n siarad ar bobl mewn gweithio gweithio gwaith o'r mewn byddwyr yn bangodes ac mae'r cyfalu fel gweithio'r gweithio. Mae gennych i ddim yn ydych chi'n gweld y gynllun, mae o'r cyfnod arddangos yw ychydig, ond mae'r ffutur yn awdur? Ond y ddweud yw'r ddweud yw'n gweithredig? Felly, mae'r rhai. Felly, mae'r ddweud yw'r ddweud. A cyd-dweud cyd-dweud yn y gynllun. Felly, mae'n ddweud yw'r cyfnod, mae yna'r cyfrifiad yw'r ysgrifennid. Mae'n ddiwedd i'n gwybod dechreu, ac mae'r cychwyn i gyntaf, byddwn ni'n hwyl yn ymwneud am y mewn yw aghelidol, ac mae'r cychwyn i'r celf, yn y ffugir, felly mae'n ddim yn nhw. Ac rwy'n gweithio'n gwybod o'i gweithio, ond mae'n gwybod yn lleidio'n gwybod o'r ffwyl yn fwynd i'r ystafell. Rwy'n gweithio gyda'n gwybod a'u gweithio'n gwybod i gyngor o'r adroddau o'r gweithio. Mae'n weld ar y gweithio'n gweithio yn y gyngor yma yn gwybod O'ch ddweud yng nghymru o'r llyfr o'i 70s, 80s, 90s, a'r unrhyw hwn. Felly mae'r ffocws yn ddechrau'r effeithiau. Mae'r ddweud yn Llyfrgell, ddweud yng nghymru, o ddweud o'r ddweud yn oed yn cymryd yng nghymru, a'i ddweud amser o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Mae'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, o'ch ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, views on most credit recipients, intropreneur. There's a lot of discussion if you are familiar with social protection literature, so a lot of discussion on how female headed households have been targeted by the government in a particular way. What are they doing? Deserving women, poor women who deserve our help, Or all of you are probably familiar with the garment industry, and women workers in the garment industry, and how they're exploited etc, which is of course true. ond yna'r llwyaf o'r ddechrau, oedd arall ychydig yn ddweud ychydig. So, y cwm nhw'n ddweud y ffordd a chael y gwleidio'r cystyniadau, y ddweud yw'r cyflosfyrd yn y Bwng Ngoeddysg, ychydig yn ymddangos yw'r ymddangos, ond yn ddweud y grifetau ar hynny'n arall y mhwylo ar gyfer sefydlu. A'r ddweud yw'r Bwng Ngoeddysg yn y Cymru muslim, mae'n ddweud yw'r ymddangos ddweud, a'r cyfnodd mae'n cydwyddonolaeth yn gweithgol iawn a'r cydwylliant yr gŵdd mae'r gwrthoedd. Rwy'n gyfrifiad ar gyfer o gŵr, rydyn ni'n gweithiau'r ddweud o'ritingd neu gyfnodd mae'r ddweud o'r continent. Rydyn ni'n ddim yn gweithio mae fyddwch yn dweud o gwylliant. Dyna bod efallai amsgolio ar gyfer gweithwyr iawn o'r ysgol. Felly, o bobl yn y Llyfridogol Cwylwyr, a'r Llyfridogwyr hon o neshynoli. Fy shyfais y cyfnodau am gweithio cyfnodau gyda'r cymhagafol, cyfnodau o bobl hon o neshynoli. Mwneud ar ôl i chi, y gallwn mewn cwylwyr hefyd – y contacts a'r hefyd a'r ddigon. Felly, mae'n amlwg ymlaen cynnwys am gwylltadau yn ymloedd o gyddiadau. Y llwyddiodi ar gyfer y menau, y llwyddiodi a'r rhannu fewn amllunau, a y llwyddi y llwyddiodi yn ym amser. Mae ydych chi gan heb yn dyfodol, mae'r rhannu eiglass o adgenol, efallai mae'r Cyfrydieb Artal, ond mae'r Cyfrydieb a'r Rhannu adgenol yn Cyfrydieb. Ydych chi i nhw i gweithio'r llwyddiodi. ac mae'n rhaid i wneud i ddweud i'r adnodd ar y syniadach ydw i'r adnodd yr modd. Ond oedd yna yma, oherwydd all y cyfnodd yma yn adnodd ar y debate ar adnodd y newydd. Felly rwy'n ffordd i'r context y Bunga Ddech, mae'r context eisoed wedi gweld yn ddodd 3 pys. Roedd, mae'n rhaid i'r panfant. Y dyma ymddir yn Bunga Ddech yn y roi ddysgu'r adnodd er mwynhau'r gweithliadau. It's Patri local. So if you're a woman marrying... ..an in Bangladesh it's a very heteronormative marriage. That's the only marriage that's recognised. You will be relocating to your husband's village. Or your husband's house. That's what's going to happen, that's why it's Patri local. But, obviously it's patriarchal. Some of you are familiar with Nyla coal's work. Which basically terms this region, South Asia andema middle East... and North Africa as a classic patriarchy". So what it means is that there is an ideology of female dependence, economic dependence, if you look at the property system, the way in the inheritance system, it constructs that kind of dependency. And there is also a culture of segregation, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are physically secluded, it sort of, mae hwn o'r cyfrifio gyda'r gweithio yn ymddian nhw, a'r ddweud y gweithio yn ymwyllgor ac yn ymddian nhw'n gweithio ymddydd y gwaith ymddian o'r gweithio. Mae'n rhaid i wneud o fflawn o'r llyfridd iawn o'r llyfridd, o'r holl yn ymgyrch yn ei wneud, yn ymgyrch yn ymgyrch. Mae ymwneud yn ysgrifennol o'r gweithio o'r ffrifio'n gweithio, o'r holl o'r gweithio, Mae'r oesodd gweithio'r gwylaeth ymlaen o'r mynd i'r gwasd o'r cyfrall, hefyd, mae'r syniad o'r cyfrannu eich gwaith o'r cyfrannu. Mae'r rhoed yn cyrraedd o'n cyfrannu o'r cyfrannu i'r ffordd. Mae'r ddweud o'r rhaid i'r gweithio'r gweithio. Mae'n mynd i gyrraedd i'r ddechrau, mae hynny ymlaen i'n meddwl i'r gweithio. Ond mae'n rhaid i'n meddwl i'r gweithio, yn Taka City. That's not what I experienced. Yes, but that's not necessarily applies to all Bangladeshi women, right? So you need to think about when you're thinking about typical Bangladeshi girls, most of them would be married off. About 66% of our girls are married off by the time they're 16. You really relocate to your husband's village. Your kin and family members are not there. What does that mean for you? Being in a completely different place, away from your family, married off. Yes, you're in laws maybe kind, but what does that mean for your life chances in terms of going to school, getting a degree, going for work, your agency? So you need to think about that context when you think about then when we talk about women as agents of change and what they have done, you need to think where they're starting from, right? So let's still talk about the Bangladesh context. I'm trying to give you a general picture of Bangladesh. So women's condition and status, if you look at the pictures from 1970s and if you look at what it is now, it has changed dramatically. So that's a dramatic shift that I was talking about. And you know that UNDP does this ranking in terms of gender development index. So Bangladesh ranks as the 134th country. That's basically the stats in 2018. And there are 197 countries, right? If you look at constitution and try to look at what's in the law, constitution guarantees equal rights for women, but that's only in the public sphere. That's not in the private sphere. And I'll come to that, what I mean by private. We are signatory to the UN convention, that's on conventional enumio of all forms of discrimination against women, the CEDOF. We signed it in 1979 when it came out. We ratified it in 1980. So we are one of the countries that did it actually right at the beginning. What is the trick here is that there is a reservation that's placed by the Bangladesh government on Article 2. And what Article 2 of CEDOF talks about is about ensuring that your legal system and all your other systems are in line to ensure gender equality in all spheres, right? So remember I talked about private sphere. So this is where private sphere comes in. Because our family laws are, so laws related to marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody, guardianship, everything that you can think about is governed by religious personal law. So this is something that was sort of in a way codified. It's not that it didn't exist, but in the form that it exists now happened during the colonial times. And it's not that things haven't been reformed, they have, but what it does is basically depending on your religion, that particular law would apply to you. So if you're a Muslim, obviously it's Sharia which would apply to you in these matters. Please don't confuse it with like civil or criminal matters. Are civil or criminal matters Sharia doesn't apply. It's only in the personal case. So if you're a Hindu, it's the Hindu sort of code that would apply. If you're a Christian, then obviously if you're Anglican and Catholic, depending on who you are, that's what would apply. And basically as with all religious personal laws, they don't necessarily treat men and women equally. So there's a problem. And it's difficult to, as I said, some of these have been reformed, but not necessarily all of it. So there's still biases within the law. And I'm happy to take questions later if you have specific questions about what it is like, et cetera. We do have a women's ministry which was established in 1979 and which has been functioning quite well. So then that means there are specific machineries within the government that looks after women's affairs and gender issues inside the government and also how things are being implemented. In terms of social development itself, remember I said the pace has been quite fast. So if you look at the statistics in the 70s and where Bangladesh started from and how it improved, the pace has been amazing in that sense. And also in terms of attitude, I mean surveys, obviously you take it with the pinch and a grain of salt because surveys don't always reflect what people think. People might just tell you what they think. So this is a 2011 survey where 74% said, and it was a nationally representative sample, said that they believe in equal rights for women. Now they might have been saying it just because that was the politically correct thing to say. But my point would be in 2011 at least they thought it was politically correct to say it. If you did the survey in 1979 or 1989, I'm sure they would not have thought about that that's the politically correct thing to say. So there is sort of this notion that equal rights is an important thing and maybe if you're not for it, you shouldn't really be saying that. So there it is. In terms of health and education, because I talked about social indicators, so that's why you look at health and education quite a lot. These are a little bit old statistics, but I wanted to put it there to show you the change. So if you look at sort of maternal mortality, so look at what it was in 1986 and look at what it is in 2001. So from 86 to 2001, you could half it. It reduces by half. That's an amazing pace for any country and for Bangladesh. Think about in the 80s. I mean right now we are economically growing at a really fast pace, 7.8% annually. Fantastic. But that's not what it was in the 1980s or even in the 1990s. Our growth was just accelerating. We were still a donor dependent country in the 80s and 90s to think about what kind of investment went in there and the policies that were being taken and being implemented to be able to do that. Our population control programmes are very well known. Those of you do demographic studies would definitely know that. So in the 70s it was 7.4 kids on average. That's the fertility rate for women. Look at the rate in 2007, which is 2.7. Right now it's 2.3. Of course we can talk about reproductive choices. Was there an instrumental kind of logic behind trying to control population? Yes, definitely. Because our country, if you have seen it on the map, it's very tiny. And there are lots of people in Bangladesh. Almost 160 million. So in that sense there was an impetus for the government to run and focus on population control. But it's the way the programme was structured. So this is the first time you start seeing women community health workers coming out in the 70s to go in the communities to talk about contraception to provide access to contraception. It is for a patriarchal country in the 1970s where we were starting from. It's a revolutionary idea at that time. You also had to not just convince the women to use contraception. You kind of had to deal with the men to get in because the men really didn't want you around. You had to convince the local clerics that this was population control was a good thing. And we did it quite well actually. Look at education. So in terms of education if you look at 1970s stats we don't do very well. There's a high level of, at that time, illiteracy among women. Right now for adult women the percentage is 49.5. But what has been amazing is that since 1990s we have managed to get girls in school and we reached gender parity long before, in primary education long before MDGs became fashionable and there was all talk about getting girls in school. And now we have almost had parity in secondary education. So it's been fantastic and that's also partly because of the kind of innovative sort of programming that happened and policy changes. So we had something called secondary school stipend that raised that targeted sort of girls because girls were dropping out after primary and they were not continuing their education. So it targeted girls and to keep girls in school. But you could only get that stipend if you were coming to school and attending school. So it's been amazing in terms of enrollment. Are there problems? Yes because remember I said girls get married by the time they're 66% of the girls. So yes I mean if you look at stats for child marriage it used to be 12 year old girls, 13 year old girls so the age has gone up a little. But you would want to keep the girls in school longer right to finish their degrees. So that's the challenge. The drop out rate towards the end of the secondary education completion of the secondary education that's our challenge right now. So let me give you a little bit more of the context. This is just giving you what it's like the whole picture. So in terms of politics we don't do that badly. The global average for representation of women in parliament is 22%. Ours is 20.3 so that's not bad. We do have a gender quota in the parliament. So there are 50 reserve seats obviously that bumps up your representation right. In the local government we also have quota or reserve seats. So one third of the seats are reserved for women. So a ward would have about one chair and you have one chair and then you have representatives right. And basically the general seats generally you see men running. It's not that women don't run in those seats but you have three reserve seats in each ward. So then it bumps up your representation rate right. And in terms of if you look at the number of words and then if you look at absolute numbers that's 24,000 women coming into office you know when local elections are run. So that's not bad. You know in terms of number it's not bad. Those of you who know a little bit about Bangladesh you know that we have had a female prime minister since 1991. It's been either Sheikhasina or Caledysia whoever has won the election and has been in power. We did have a little bit of time as caretaker government regime in sort of 2007 and 2008 but that's only brief break for two years. So we have had a female prime minister since 1991. That's quite a feat for any country. Right now we have a female speaker. We have had women ministers quite a few of them in the last few terms ever since sort of democracy returned so that's not necessarily bad compared to a lot of countries where people would have trouble to show women in the cabinet or women as speakers or women as heads of government. So you're not doing badly. There are different there are questions there of course in terms of you might say okay you have quotas for parliamentarians and you have quotas for local government how effective are the women when they go into power whether are they able to promote women's interests or not in these spaces so obviously there are questions around that but in terms of just presence of women that's not a bad thing. Let's look at work. So currently the labour force participation is 33% which of course we would like it to be higher but sadly that's not what it is. In urban areas obviously a lot of you know about the garment sector so we do have a lot of women working in the readymade garment sectors. There are also informal sectors where women work. I can show you lovely pictures that I have. The bureaucracy has about a 15% quota for women. The quota hasn't been necessarily fulfilled. We still lag behind so you know not all like government official posts then gets filled. But in primary education obviously a lot of our primary teachers almost 60% are women health workers. A lot of women work in the health sector particularly nursing. I mean if you look at government hospitals and sort of the community health centres and other centres. So it's not a bad picture in that sense. In terms of you asked me about gender wage gap. The wage gap is definitely there. It's not equal for men and women but it is narrowing down for professional jobs but you know if you say well what's happening with agriculture or labour is what happens in that market. Difficult thing to sort of or like in the informal sector where you can't really regulate it becomes difficult of course. In rural areas you see a lot of women working in agriculture and lots of home-based kind of productions so cottage industries, kitchen gardens and things like that, poultry a big area. You do see poor women working in public works programme and it is particularly targeted towards women, female-headed households, women who have been divorced or abandoned or don't have male support. So the targeting criteria actually then tries to select women from those groups. Of course you all know about our microcredit programme which is quite successful and we can talk about the problems of credit afterwards but the majority of the borrowers are women's credit programmes run by NGOs and government do target women and promote women's borrowing. Having said that I'm giving you lots of rosy facts but then there are also stuff or challenges that we haven't been able to really adequately address as of yet. So this is a 2007 survey but I can also give you the recent figures. This is about ever married women, women who have been ever married and it's about physical violence so you can see it's 49% and in Bangladesh marriage is universal remember must women do get married. You know that's how it is, that's how society runs. You do see single women or widowed women but generally women get married and 49% is quite high if you think about it. But then there are also attitude surveys so you can see in that attitude survey the same one I talked about which said 74% thought women should have equal rights. This one says that 55% thought that violence against women under any condition particularly domestic violence is never justified but that's 55%. It wanted to be higher right and as I said child marriage is definitely high in Bangladesh so we have our challenges in terms of of sort of the context and what we do. So as you can see some things changed, some things didn't change so how did this change happen? So let me take you back to 1970s in 1973 so this is after independence. We gained our independence in 1971 in December and then obviously 72 is quite chaotic because it's post-war turn country you're trying to put things together. In 73 you have the elections, you have a government and it's trying to come up with the first five-year plan so those of you who are thinking what is FFYP is the first five-year plan and if you analyze that document it talks about women's role as mothers particularly under education so you want educated women because you want educated mothers and it talks about rehabilitation for survivors of rape during war and that's the only two places where women are mentioned. Women are not mentioned anywhere else it's the first five-year plan of the country. I have an interesting family story about that so my father and his colleagues a lot of them were his friends so they're all my if you know Bangladeshi culture then they're all my chachus or what it means is uncles they were all part of forming this wonderful plan and obviously the plan came out and then there was sort of a domestic dispute going on in all the academics who were involved in formulating this fantastic plan or working in the planning commission because their wives mostly who were also academics were furious because they were like where are the women and basically the answer was but we don't have any statistics how can we put you guys in how can we even plan if there is no statistics and that sort of is the kind of the backstory of how research on women got started by women academics because they suddenly realized that it doesn't matter how much you say that this is a justified thing to look at women's issues you still need to provide data and there wasn't data and the government wasn't really thinking about getting data because it just produced that kind of plan um having said that I mean obviously that's the backstory and we are talking about it but if you look at 1970s and if you look at all the different governments documents around the world remember the first um UN decade for women's thoughts in 1975 the first women's conference the world women's conference and there were there was Mexico, Copenhagen, Nairobi and Beijing those of you familiar with uh sort of women and development stuff you already know this so Mexico happens in 1975 so the UN is asking for statistics from many countries what's the condition of women a lot of countries couldn't provide that because they didn't have statistics so it's not unusual for Bangladesh which is just come out of a war to not have that much if you look at the development literature and sort of um how women are framed in that literature a lot of the time they're framed as their users of services services that are provided but their healthcare services education whatever it is they're framed as economic agents so in the credit literature there's a lot of talk about women as economic agents um they're also framed as oh they're part of the civil society uh sometimes they're talked about as oh women also act as policymakers particularly in Bangladesh it's kind of hard to avoid given the number of women you have in politics so you kind of have to talk about it if your prime minister is female because obviously she is the main decision maker so you do frame it that way um and as I said there there are lots of different types of government policies and uh government actions whether that was around family planning I was talking about or health or education uh those helped to bring about this change but there were also movement uh social movements um and then also service delivery by civil society organizations so innovative models that were tested out so the credit programs that you know about that that was initially tested by Gramin Bank or um or BRAC um and you also had NGOs testing out other kinds of services not just credit but around provision of legal aid thinking about what if you can't address adult education through formal education system then how do you do it well through non-formal education or how do you get children who are in hard to reach areas to school so if they can't have formal schooling so there are different types of programs that sort of started focusing on how do you sort of get the society moving um we are used to criticising donors quite a lot in terms of them meddling in national agendas and generally a lot of donors do that and if you look at 70s and 80s history we all know that uh you know um foreign external powers weren't that great they meddled quite a bit in politics um but in Bangladesh's case this is an interesting particularly if you look at gender and development agenda it's an uh it's an interesting story it's an interesting story partly because donors actually did do something here they did take a risk they did fund programs that were not necessarily going to be popular but also like stuff that was needed that needed to be done so shelter for women anti-trafficking um sort of activities violence against women um sort of for example we had to have a form of violence which is called acid violence or acid attack so it's attack a lot of the time women are victims of these particular types of incidents so creating or funding activities not just to raise awareness but service provision for these specific survivors of this kind of horrendous attack these were you know uh working with us not just in terms of hiv programs but working with sex workers sex workers rights programs these were initially started off through donor funding working along with rights-based organizations in in the country and that was a risk to take because not these programs you don't know whether they would succeed they're not always you can't always show impact a lot of the time we talk about donor funding and we say well what's the impact how many did you save what did you do I mean that's the predominant discourse these days against aid that we can't see impact of the kind of changes we want to see so think about that and think about the risk that you're taking funding programs that may not necessarily be popular that may be controversial that maybe you're taking a risk that may not be successful so in that sense that's not it's not a bad story if you for the donors or at least donors should have some good press somewhere um but um what is um interesting is that in that story in terms of analyzing the policy analyzing what the NGOs did analyzing what the donors did people kind of forget about well what did the women do and that's what I want to talk about what what did the women do because women did the heavy lifting as they always do right so let's look at women as agents of change um how am I doing for time oh oh my god uh so women as agents of change in terms of the history itself uh it's nothing near in Bangladesh Bangladesh has a very rich history of women participating in anti-colonial struggles in social welfare activities in economic entrepreneurship um those of you who know about Roquea so let me show you that's her that's big home Roquea and that's our uh if you think about Bangladeshi feminists that's where we take our inspirations from um those of you who unfortunately cannot read Bangladesh can read English this is one of her books it's about uh this she imagines this land which is called it's just a feminist utopia and it's called Sultanah's dream and it's quite an interesting story in terms of if you had a place where women ruled what would it look like and this was written in 1905 you know so quite interesting um we have had people who fought colonial powers so if you think about Preetilata or or Ilamitro or Gumudini Hajang they're fighting British colonial powers we have had women in social welfare right and um basically that tradition continued all throughout and it's still continuing and if you look at the struggle it's not just the prominent leaders that i'm picking out but you also have women who are struggling every day and advancing rights of women in the work that they do so credit program that targeted women at a time when women don't inherit property uh women are not necessarily in the market that you're being integrated there's an instrumental logic behind why you're being targeted partly if you talk to people who run these programs is that um basically women are within the household and they can't necessarily default on your loan because they can't run away like men um but if you look at what they did with the money what that money helped them in terms of decision making within the family the fact that in a society where you have never handled cash you're handling cash the fact that you have credit group meetings and you're in a village where actually you just stayed within your neighborhood you're going to the meetings it may seem like a little thing for us because we take the tube and we travel and everything else think about that context and think about what that means and there was a lot of resistance when the initially credit program started it wasn't easy and these women were branded in a particular way they still took a chance to do that think about the rng workers the readymade government workers uh there a lot of them when it started were young girls teenage girls coming from the village uh taking up this job never been to urban area uh probably has a sister or whoever and coming to stay with them um sort of trying to negotiate you negotiate with the family to say i don't want to get married now i'd like to work think about your 15 and you're trying to negotiate that or you're running away to do it think about earning money yes it's an exploitative work but the money also gives you a kind of agency and how does that change think about the fact that this was a country where you didn't see women workers going out in large numbers and suddenly you see that in streets of Dhaka in the morning and in the evening time large numbers of women in the public space what does that mean that does something that changes something uh think about women health workers remember that we talked about the family planning uh program think about at a time when you didn't see women going to the villages door to door uh sort of talking about contraception and suddenly you're doing it it may seem like a small thing think about the context and what does that mean initially when they started doing it it what they weren't part of us great women but it happened things changed and of course you have the professional women that numbers have gone up in terms of women doctors women lawyers women as academics Dhaka University where i'm on leave from that was established in 1921 we still have a law our rule in the statute which says that if a male student and a female student talks without faculty being present that you have to pay fine so that's still in the rule books nobody cares about it there are so many female faculty to begin with you know that it's it's it's it's a dramatic change if you think about the changes in in that sense so let me show you pictures of women so this was this was a contest we ran in terms of what are the pictures of if you thought about women's empowerment how would you see it so this is a a bangle seller on Dhaka street in a public space hawking her her stuff this is a female mechanic in as you know mechanics you know mechanics job is quite a male dominated profession and you see a girl doing it this is obviously in the garment industry and she's a female manager looking at things construction workers again in the public spaces this is night time generally there is a strong taboo against women being out in at night but you can see that she's a tea shop owner selling stuff um some of you those of you who are bangle that she probably very well recognise us she's a well-known journalist that's her team and she's on she's a tv journalist and uh our female peacekeepers so we do participate in UN peacekeeping missions and she is one of the one of the peacekeepers sort of had an um there was a fantastic interview that she gave about what the job meant to her and sort of what were the challenges and of course you see collective struggles so the top picture is 1971 basically and the bottom one is in 2011 but you do see women in in the streets so i'm going to talk a little bit about women's movement can you give me ed can you hear me now when i'm running out of time absolutely um so with women's movement and that coat is from a colleague of mine sort of saying that among all the different movements in Bangladesh this is one of the most vibrant and even though the size doesn't seem very big it's like the tick of the back of an elephant with a very loud voice and women's movement in Bangladesh does have a very loud voice there are different types of organizations you have activists organizations that are membership-based mass organizations or you have professional organizations like female lawyers organizations you have policy and advocacy organizations and you also have NGOs that are for women run by women or you have social movement organizations and they've they operate at different levels a local level national level how they're formalized in terms of what their structures are whether they have a governing body whatever it varies depending on there are many different types over the years they have looked at many different issues and as you can see the list is crammed here right so in 1970s it was around rehabilitation for the rape victims but also around development initiatives were starting as you can see in by 1980s they've started picking up rights-based issues around violence against women about having family courts for women to settle the different family disputes about political participation of women about changing personal law by 1990s obviously the issues have added up so you know they're talking about custodial violence so violence in police custody they're talking about reforming the family code they're talking about well how is money being spent by the government how do we track it so there are specific ways of looking at gender budgets they're talking about acid violence the specific form of violence we talked about they're talking about sexual harassment about minority women's rights in Bangladesh trafficking etc and then from last decade other issues have come in in terms of migration domestic violence the particular policies that government have a lot of different issues and they employ many different types of strategies so a lot of it is about how do you frame your demand remember you're operating in a patriarchal context not everybody would like what you want to demand so a lot of my research is on women's movement looking at their different strategies so one is sort of around CEDAW I found it quite interesting because they were framing it as this is the bill of rights for women you know that that kind of framing and framing it around why is it a justice based issue there is also a lot of focus on conscientisation surround the movement that was around addressing acid violence focused quite a lot on that what's the impact of that violence the fact that a lot of the time it was justified around oh the the girls must have violated some kind of social norm that oh they had because a lot of the attacks were by boys or men who were romantically interested in the girls and the girls had refused them sort of saying that you know girls have a right to say no and it doesn't matter whether you had a previous relationship or whatever it is you still have a right to say no to that that nobody deserves this kind of attack um it's not I mean it when you are a movement itself you need allies in different um sort of spheres of this state and also the society uh the media generally has been quite sympathetic it's partly because a lot of the women's movement actors also have personal or informal connections uh in the sense that you know you went to the same school or you went to the same university so you know the editor or you know the journalist you can call them up and say hey me need this kind of um and then also with state bureaucracy itself so inside the bureaucracy you do have sympathetic actors or used to have sympathetic actors that you had uh linked with and obviously when you target the state you don't just target state is not a monolithic block you pick and choose which organ you want to target who you want to target within that organization and you use your informal networks if you don't have the numbers and if you can't be out in the street in millions then you have to use those informal networks to get your agenda in to get your foot in the door but there's also other strategies in terms of creating spectacles to attract attention so one of one of the instances I'll talk about here briefly is uh which was about maternal mortality so we have uh those of you who know Bangladesh's history know about the language movement in 1952 which is where then sort of the whole genesis for Bangladesh in terms of the cultural sort of nationalism started there is a memorial commemorating the martyrs who had who had died and you know for or who were shot by the police and who died so there that place is has a monument to commemorate them so for maternal mortality the way women's movement wanted to draw attention was that um you had a candlelight vigil you went to the martyr's memorial and it's it was a candle for each woman in that year who had died giving birth and it was spectacular and it drew attention to to the issue they do a lot of experiential workshop so for example public hearing on violence against women people talking about their experiences what does that mean experience of that kind of violence they do a lot of national convention to establish those uh their expertise uh their coordinated demonstrations of different types right uh there are also not just women's movement but women are also in other social movements so we talked about national movements and women being symbols in that but there has been women's collective action there's a rich tradition of that in terms of women being part of peasant movement so some of you know about the Tabagha movement which happened um quite a while ago but you know part of peasant movements part of commercial shrimp farming is very popular but then that affects land in a particular way so then women being part of that movement there are movements around minority struggles particularly in Chidagong hill tracks so you have particular organizations that focus on issues that women face in that particular area women are part of labour movements and migration movements the organization that I have there BOMSA is basically an organization that run that's run by female migrants you know um obviously there are many different types of challenges for women's movement just because you're being very vibrant doesn't necessarily mean that you're always very effective um and there are different types of challenges that come up um as you saw women's movement agenda grow throughout the different years obviously you also had fragmentation in terms of what you think is the key issue and what should be the focus a lot of the time particularly in 90s and last decade the focus has been can we change policy and who do we know inside the state but women's movement is not necessarily about policy change it's also about changing minds it's a social movement right so you also need uh work there you know in terms of how do you change mindset how do you change the culture and there's been a little bit of a less focus on that recently uh there's all of course a challenge of individualization of the movement itself it's a particular term we feminists use but it's partly because when you have a large NGO sector and we have the world's largest NGO sector in terms of how you do movement then becomes the way NGOs do things and social movements are not necessarily NGOs but there has been an individualization in terms of the modes of organizing in terms of how you count success there's of course also the challenge of are you on the wider political agenda and also do you have younger people or new blood and of course there's the whole issue of intersectionality in terms of is there middle class bias our minority issues clearly represented uh so there are different types of challenges um apart from the challenges that are internal to the movement itself there are challenges that are external so in terms of do you have access to political spaces and i don't mean policy spaces i mean political parties uh women's rights issues aren't necessarily popular with political parties this is not something that happens in Bangladesh it's not anywhere in the world really it doesn't get you votes uh most of the time so it becomes difficult you may have allies within the state you may be vibrant in the civil society but you also want in a democracy where do agendas come from it comes through political parties that's how you debate and if you're not on the agenda how do you get on the agenda so in a sense that's a very big challenge we have seen changes in the way discourses are framed so policy discourse how you make demands how things are reported in the media and we have seen policy change but adoption of policies is not enough you want them implemented some policies of course are successfully implemented in the way i talked about you know population policies for you know health education etc but some policies are difficult in terms of violence against women you know how do you you know you saw the numbers um of course then there's the issue about if you're not really interacting with the political parties or if you are afraid of being co-opted by political parties then where do you go how much influence can you have um how do you get if you're vibrant in the civil society how do you get other civil society actors to be involved in your agenda so it's not just women's agenda and women just doing um working on women's rights um and this is the last slide so Ed um it's basically apart from the external challenges that women's movement face there's also the challenge that is created by the wider shifts wider economic and political shifts both nationally and internationally so what happens in the global policy spaces affects Bangladeshi women whether that's about readymade garment sector whether that is about uh strips whether that is about migration because we do send quite a bit of female laborers who are blue color workers to different countries so when these global policies are made or debated or framed whose channels are voices uh that's a tough thing of course you all know about run a plaza and the collapse of the plaza and there is this whole big thing about accord and alliance and europeans uh sort of powers coming in and talking about well how it needs to be reformed and you also had the us led alliance talking about things but you know you can talk all you want and you can talk about how the labor is exploitative and everything else but what are you willing to do as consumers are you willing to take the hit because you know rights cost money where's the money gonna come from and you can't say well why aren't the business owners doing this you think businesses just do things they don't um there's a whole issue about care economy so women's unpaid care work burden the childcare the elderly care everything that you depend on you do want women in the labor market coming through and you see the numbers are rising but that also means that what do we have in place for childcare and elderly care and all the kinds of programs that you see in developed countries and can we afford that and if you can't afford that then what is the alternate because it's the alternate cannot be that women can't go to work you know that's that cannot be the alternate uh there is a challenge of violence against women in the public space which is rising um and sort of how do you address that you know because if you do want women outside working or in politics or in the public spheres you do need to address harassment issues and this is not necessarily just something Bangladesh faces this is something that's faced everywhere let's face it climate change again is a big challenge Bangladesh is facing environmental challenges in a large in a big way what does that has specific gender implications in terms of livelihoods changing in terms of migration happening in a particular way it's affecting families and it's affecting women and you also have natural disasters happening at a rapid more frequent manner so again global policy spaces and climate debates uh where are our voices we are a tiny country right we need our allies and it's not just talking about um sort of policies but you need when you talk about policies and when you talk about this convention you also need to put on that gender lens which a lot of the time is missing from these debates it's not there and of course the perineal challenge that we have around family laws because we are not equal in private so we have lots of challenges so when I said contentious empowerment that's why I said it's contentious because we have overcome the first generation of challenges but we need to overcome quite a lot more um are do women have the kind of strength that's needed I think so we have come this far but we need a lot more different allies and um a lot more sympathetic actors at different levels and hopefully it's there because we can do miracle thank you so much Professor Nazanin thank you very much for a compelling enthusiastic and in my view convincing lecture uh you remind it as in a timely fashion as it's International Women's Day tomorrow about the classificatory practices and counting practices of states and international organisations and the effects that those sorts of things have you also talked about I think very importantly the ways in which social change does or does not happen through agency and the interaction of different kinds of people I think they're very important lessons to bring into this forum and I thank you very much for delivering the lecture just before I pass on to the vote of thanks I'd like to say just one other thing about the spirit of the partnership between the SOAS South Asia Institute and the Seventh of March Foundation last year for the first lecture in the series which was scheduled for the Seventh of March we had industrial action on our campus um due to a pension dispute and we all agreed that the Seventh of March Foundation lecture should be moved until April uh in order to respect the picket lines that were around SOAS at the time and that I think was a very important moment of solidarity between us and the Seventh of March Foundation which brought us together in a very uh different kind of industrial dispute very important for us and I think very respectful of my colleagues in the Seventh of March Foundation who really were quite keen on bricklaying getting into Bloomsbury as soon as possible but they kindly delayed in respect for our industrial action so finally I'd like to invite my colleagues from the Seventh of March Foundation within Amherd to invite to present the final vote of thanks and after the vote of thanks we will go to a reception in the other building so thank you thanks Ed yes I think we made fast move last year from bricklaying to Bloomsbury we are here to again this year hopefully you have to put up with for future minimally years too okay so I think I have only one job to do to thank everyone for attending but it's quite difficult listening to someone like Professor Nazmi where do you start who do you think fast right but I think the listening to Harry's speech because we are not quite sure what topic to test because this is our our second second lecture then we thought in two years time Bangladesh will be slaverating gold or jewellty of its independence and we cannot there cannot be any better topic than talk about population almost 50% is it or something like that what is the position of that what because one of the ideal of Bangladesh was to create opportunities for everyone fairer society because Professor Nazmi mentioned about Seventh March's speech and that March's speech if you look into one of the most important words Sheikh Mojibur Rahman is used emancipation and he qualified that one is economic social cultural emancipation and that's why we thought this is it listening to since what's so eloquent so informative therefore I think I and obviously we saw different of this year's speech is that women were not looked at just stereotypical but women being in the driving force in the agent for change that's what she has I think Bangladesh has made lots of progress but there are lot to be done that's what we have learned so I think I would like everyone to join thanking Professor Nazmi for a beautiful eloquent delivery of the lecture. I cannot finish without thinking and someone else how did we get to the reach Dr Nazmi right the finding done on us in was a challenge itself and we spent many months trying to start for the right speaker so therefore I'd like to give one of biggest thing to Professor Edward Simpson for finding and finally I will go on to listing all my colleagues but I think I would like to mention for his hard work he worked tirelessly last year and he was telling that I am ready for next year's world and so therefore very big thanks to Sunil Poon of the Institute of South East Asia and my colleague Ansar Adaiwak Stogwiri who also continued to provide support for the foundation but lastly but not least all thanks to you for turning up making this event a very success will you be in a wonderful world here okay thank you