Gender Justice

 

According to BARCIK’s understanding gender justice refers to a world where everybody, women and men, boys and girls are valued equally, and are able to share equitably in the distribution of power, knowledge and resources. In other words, gender justice is a human right; women, men and girls and boys are entitled to live in dignity and in freedom, without any fear and discrimination. Gender justice includes equitable sharing of power, effective participation, decision making and responsibility between women and men at home, in their workplace, and in the wider national and international communities. Gender justice requires social and government’s safeguarding mechanism and intervention by formulating guidelines, policies and acts to explore and monitor the practice of the gender sensitized actions.

However, gender inequality which prevails in the personal space to society due absence of gender justice is primarily an issue of unequal power relations between men and women. It violates human rights, constrains choice and has negative impacts on people’s ability to participate in, contribute to and benefit from social, political and economic development.

Nonetheless, women and girls experience most severely the impacts of gender injustice in the society and state. Women and girls in Bangladesh face discrimination at home and in their work place as well. BARCIK’s experiences tell that in Bangladesh man generally dominates the society and the decision-making mechanism featuring women as household keepers. Their (women) works compose of cooking, taking care of children and serving the unpaid labors of the families. It has been seen that women get lower wage than men although they do the same works and the underlying root cause of this is the existing male dominated social beliefs and values where women are seen as sub-ordinates to men. Women can seldom participate in decision making process that relates their life and livelihood. Moreover, illiteracy, superstitions and lack of involvement in income generating activities has intensified their low status in the family and society. Additionally, it has been seen that in Bangladesh women and young girls are more disadvantaged than men in their access to education, employment, services and entitlements. Women are often side-lined and excluded in all social, familial, economic and even political decision-making processes and they are often considered inferior to men which is also a hindrance to achieve the SDG. Therefore, violence against women and girls is reported everywhere in the country.

Meanwhile, the SDG focuses on women empowerment and their participation in all decision-making processes that relate their life, livelihood and rights. The goal no-5 of SDG focuses on providing women and girls with equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making. Achieving the SDGs in Bangladesh therefore, will require gender equality and women empowerment which ultimately will contribute to establish gender justice in the society.

However, in order to contribute in exploring the gender sensitized activities, behavior and actions BARCIK has been facilitating different types of activities such as meetings, dialogues, trainings, campaigns, policy advocacy and publications in its working areas. The government officials, member of civil society, researchers, journalists, women, men, farmers, youths and students participate in these activities share their views. The organization also has taken numbers of awareness programs to create awareness among men and women regarding their roles and responsibilities to establish gender justice in the society. In addition, BARCIK arranges house yard meeting ensuring the participation of village leaders, religious leaders and other social actors who could work for providing ‘space’ for women in social, economic, political and religious activities. The organization itself makes sincere efforts to enforce the gender guidelines and policies in all of its program and management operations. BARCIK realizes, the term ‘Gender Justice’ will remain only a ‘paper’ concept unless both the state and society including all social, political & cultural organizations take step to translate the concept into reality and ensure the gender sensitized norms, behavior and practice in the society and state. BARCIK through its different projects has been working to promote gender justice in the society.