By Ali Hassan

For the rest of South Asia to improve the participation of women in its economy, it can apply some of the lessons learned from Bangladesh’s inclusive policies. A comparative look at Bangladesh’s economic progress shows its commitment to raising the standards of living for women and girls in the last three decades. Increasing state capacity and political commitment to economic development has resulted in increased gender equality.
In a country without substantial natural resources, the prominence on the development of human resources has become a part of Bangladesh’s national agenda for development in recent years. From 1970 till present, Bangladesh directed international aid towards Gender in Development (GID) and Gender and Development (GAD) projects. Three key areas where such programs focused include female education, family planning, and micro-financing for women-run MSMEs to help conventional women into the workforce.
As a consequence, Bangladesh has seen extensive successes both for the individual welfare of women and for its economy largely. The maternal mortality rate was reduced from 472 per 100,000 live births in 1991 to 181 in 2015. There are currently more girls than boys attending Bangladeshi secondary schools, and more than 30 million women in Bangladesh are customers of microcredit organizations showcasing their direct interactions with the economy.
In 2015, 23 million out of 26 million Micro-Finance Institute clients were women. In the meantime, 15 percent of all Bangladesh Bank refinance abilities for the MSME sector have been distributed to women entrepreneurs. As a result of Bangladesh’s liberal policies, the World Bank guesses that female labor force contribution rose by 10 percentage points between 2003 and 2016 refining the country’s overall economic growth via augmented female workforce contribution.
Likewise, other Asian countries including Pakistan can replicate Bangladesh’s synergized developmental policy where all stakeholders including state, civil society, and global donors can make a political pledge to such a developmental plan where women’s education and healthcare is a main focus. An improved educated facility provided for female labor force is key to economic development.
One auspicious area for growth and innovation is the agricultural sector, which employs a large of percentage of women working in Asian countries and contributed Asian countries. Transformation in the agriculture could support in acquainting women with innovative high-tech practices as well as authorizing women in the agriculture sector to capitalize in the green tech revolution and advance the productivity. The dire economic inactivity and lack of gender parity policy in the rest of South Asia can be addressed by the introduction of women-centric developmental strategies by state institutions, international aid organizations, and ratification of women’s economic empowerment at local level leadership.
Communal level programs can invest in building the sense of earnestness to invest in Asian women education, health, inspire entrepreneurship, with the purpose of building a women workforce; that is skilled and enabled at state and community level to corresponding industry and production requirements. This investment will be effective in twofold manner: first, internally, it will help drive the young female population’s appetite to achieve milestones in education, health, and contribute to innovation and in turn to the growth of economy.
On the exterior, the South Asia female skilled labor can help position better in the competition with the global economies. Calling for the female youth towards action and mutual responsibility, while also preparing and training this potential workforce can enable South Asian women to help their states and its communities in overcoming the economic and development challenges in the future.
Empowering and including women in the economy could be the untapped potential necessary to drive growth and development that is essential for reviving a staggering economy. However, to improve the access of women to the workforce in South Asia a deep knowledge of cultural and institutional constraints is important.
Offering an important comparative context, Bangladesh’s recent progress is a compelling case in particular as it is a relatively younger country, has a Muslim majority, and faced alarming levels of poverty in the past but has been able to revive its economy, literacy rate, life expectancy and increase women participation in the workforce to 35 percent in recent years. Bangladesh’s is offering a prevailing lesson to pursue successful policies that bring women into economic development of South Asia.