Our vulnerable women

FOR all the claims made about progress insofar as women's outward and upward mobility is concerned, there are some very good reasons to think that there is yet a long way to go. Just how long that road is comes through a Unicef finding that one of every five girls between the ages of 15 and 19 is sexually abused by her partner or husband.

Add to this the fact that as many as 47 per cent of adolescent girls in the country suffer through physical or sexual violence. Of course, we do not get to hear of such violence, not much any way because of the conservative nature of society. Indeed --- and this is apart from what Unicef says --- there are even educated, career women in the country's urban regions who have borne in silence violence exercised on them by their husbands. Housewives are raped and murdered. Young women have been known to commit suicide following their failure to arrive by justice over crimes committed on their person or reputation.

Now that is indeed a serious indictment of the circumstances in which Bangladesh's women lead their lives. Despite the presence of rights bodies dealing specifically with women's issues, there is hardly any coordinated mechanism that can ensure that women will not become targets of men's violence.

The Unicef findings should be a wake-up call, especially for the government. It must show that it cares about the safety of women. Only when it does that will the nation feel reassured about the unhindered movement of Bangladesh's women.