Bangladesh has made great improvements when it comes to gender equality, especially in public life. This includes equal school enrollment, improved economic and political participation and laws that promote gender equality in different areas of life. However, the implementation of policies and laws remain behind, and violence against women and child marriage are still widespread.
In the private sphere, women still don’t have equal rights when it comes to issues like marriage, divorce, inheritance and custody of children. This has been a large point of attention for the women’s movement in the country, which also has been advocating for the withdrawal of the country’s reservations of CEDAW.
Although improvement has been observed, women journalists remain underrepresented in the media sector, and are mostly present in urban areas. Sexual harassment and safety in and outside of the newsroom remain a major concern. Furthermore, the content produced by the media is overwhelmingly from a male perspective, with women and their issues highly underrepresented and often portrayed in stereotypical ways. Women do not access information as easily and frequently as men, and close to half of women have no exposure to any mass media on a weekly basis. Especially women living in rural areas and with lower education have lower exposure to mass media.

This study was done for the PRIMED Programme. The document is for internal use only. Apologies for the inconvenience.