Developing Gender Awareness among the Rural Women through Micro-credit Programmes: A case study from Bangladesh

摘要

Women represent about half of the total population in Bangladesh (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2006) and they are by tradition dominated by men in all spheres of their lives. The women in Bangladesh work hard all day long in the households and sometimes outside of the home. But they are the most underprivileged section considering education, income earning, scope of employment, decision making, etc. The constitution of the People's Republic of Bangladesh grants equal rights to men and women, in actuality they are not enjoying the same rights (Islam 2000). Women's status has been ranked 105th in the world on the basis of twenty indicators: health, marriage, children, education, employment and social equality (UNDP 2006).