It is appreciable that Bangladesh is one of the few countries in the region that has seen an increase in female employment in the last decade or so while also cutting the wage gap between the genders, hitherto skewed in favour of men, significantly. Bangladesh should keep this momentum going to create more gender equality.
Women's working mentality and opportunities are increasing gradually in our country despite challenges and constraints due to the lack of congenial working environment. The term 'environment' includes many factors like physical, chemical and biotic elements which influence life of anything living in the material world. In term of human beings, it is the aggregated social and cultural conditions that have positive and negative impacts on the life of an individual or a group of people. Better working environment encourages the individuals to stay in their organisation for a long period of time. The issue is more important for a woman as she needs some sort of extra care, facilities and protection in their workplace.
The number of women employees is increasing and they are playing crucial roles in the corporate organisations in Bangladesh. Working in this corporate world also has not still improved so far as proper women-friendly infrastructure and comfortable office environment for work are concerned. Women-friendly working environment includes having some gender sensitive policies and arrangements like transports and for female workers, maternity leaves, child care center, and protection from sexual harassment both mentally and physically or any other exploitative practices by her counterpart male colleagues or higher officials. Women still have limited choices, control and decision-making power over their employment finances and economic assets.
The mentality of treating women as weak, dependent and emotionally fragile must end. In workplace, gender-friendly environment has to be established. Male employers should try to provide suitable working environment to make sure that there is no unfriendly atmosphere for female employees. If at any case she needs to stay longer at office to complete assignments, the office authority should take extra care for their security and safety.
On the other hand, higher management should take some steps to make a healthy and conducive working environment for ladies and also ensure equal wages without gender discrimination. Therefore, the government should have specific policy on gender issues equally applicable to all sectors in order to ensure equal rights for both genders.
Women-owned businesses in Bangladesh need better access to market and to corporate value chains for the purpose of promoting the country’s inclusive growth and creating more jobs,