One of my closest (if not the closest) friends named her son 'Swapna' meaning dream. He is her second child; the first one is a daughter. She said that she named her son so because he was the dream of the family of her husband. Both my friend and her husband are doctors and of very progressive mindset. I was surprised, rather shocked, to find that they have nakedly shown disparity between their daughter and son. If I were her daughter, I would definitely feel lifetime offended.

It clearly depicts the position of women in our society. Although much have been said and done for the sake of women development and empowerment, little has been achieved in reality. Still our newspapers are overburden with news of grisly torture on young women for dowry. The country has earned reputation of being a safe heaven for women traffickers. Teasing and kidnapping young woman by our political thugs (and future lawmakers and ministers!) are still frequent. We are going back to the Dark Age when people used to kill their baby girls.

It seems quite perplexing to me. The society is open to accepting good things. Although we like to portrait ourselves as conservatives, Bangladesh has gone through lots of social reforms in the last three decades. I do not find any good reason of failure in women development and empowerment because there is no controversy in most of the areas of women development like health, nutrition, education, jobs etc. Does anyone of the country protest providing better health care facilities for the women? No one has objection for giving better education for women or ensuring safe job environment for them. The most radical fundamentalist and fanatic of the country did not find anything objectionable in providing stipends for girl students. I do not think that they have any problem in creating more job opportunities for the women or in providing better transport facilities for them. The wife of the Ameer of the main Islamic party is a workingwoman and the man (a minister) proudly told a journalist that his family is run by his wife's income.

Then where is the problem? Why are we not becoming successful in creating an equal, safe and respected position for women?

For any social development and reform to be successful and sustainable, it must be integrated with the social values and culture. Unfortunately women development took an iconoclastic way at a stage. Instead of working for the betterment of health, nutrition and education of women, organisations working in this area took the issues that most people of the society are not supportive to. I used to work in one of the biggest NGO of the country. The NGO had a Gender Relation Coordination Cell, which devoted most of its efforts in arranging joint conferences of the prostitutes (it called them sex workers) of Bangladesh and West Bengal and organising political rallies against the Islamists resulting violent confrontations at many places in the country. The net results of those women development activities were nothing but social unrest and political gain of some people.

On the other hand, when the government introduced ambitious project of distributing stipends for girl students, people from all quarters, including the Islamists, welcomed it. There was no 'Fatwa' and no confrontation. It is probably the most successful initiative of social reform in our history.

Taking the confrontational way knowingly seemed very unusual to me. When there are two ways to achieve the goal, one is acceptable to everyone and the other is of conflict and confrontation, why people take the later? Is it only a strategic mistake? Or it is a fund-raising strategy?

I think one of the reasons of our failure in women development is the strategic mistake of taking the confrontational way. In such cases, focus is made on the confrontations resulting waste of resource and energy in it and distracting the endeavour from its main goal.

Whether we like it or not, religion has been an inseparable part of our society. It has becoming increasingly dominating. The domination of religion becomes especially obvious during the election days. The largest secular political party had to start printing 'Allah is Almighty' in all of its posters and banners, its leader had to wear hijab and paste millions of posters with her photograph at prayer throughout the country to win the general election. Some people may find it disappointing and feel the need to resist it, however from the development point of view, I do not think it wise to engage in unnecessary conflict with religion. Such conflicts divert the development efforts from its original goals.

The recent initiative of the government to introduce women football tournaments in open places does not seem wise to me. It seems to me that it contributes more to creating social unrest than women development. Women football is said to be targeted to improve women health because sports involve physical exercise. I would be happier if the authorities focused on equipping girls' schools, colleges and university halls will more facilities for sports and physical exercise.

The nation is passing through lots of confrontations. The politics of strikes and agitations will start in full strength after the Ramadan impacting seriously the economy of the country. The citizens are sick and tired of these conflicts. The nation needs sometime to breath and do the positive things.