Women\u27s Rights and Discrimination in Bangladesh : Achievements Made and Challenges Remaining for the 21^<st> Century

Bangladesh, a poor developing country with a burden of more than 136 million people is endeavoring in establishing the rights of its women like other developing countries in the world. Although the Constitution ensures equal rights to women, they are facing gross deprivation of their basic fundamental human rights due to various social, economical, political, and religious reasons. They are psychically insecure subject to different forms of violence e.g. rape, acid throwing, trafficking, etc. Besides these, they are also facing other legal and social discriminations, e.g. in their level of participation in the political and administrative fields, education, and health care services, etc. To overcome this situation, beside NGOs and civil society, Government of Bangladesh (GOB) is also trying to curb the violence against women in the country by enacting different national laws, and signing and implementing different international instruments. This paper will be mainly concerned with the socio-economic structure of Bangladeshi women by defining their various rights recognized under the laws of the country as well as their rights under practical contexts with a view to provide finally some recommendations for enhancing the women\u27s rights in Bangladesh that will be in accordance with the essence of the concept of\u27equal rights\u27 of the Constitution of the country. In other words, the main objective of this paper is to examine various rights recognized under the theoretical framework as well the practical scenario for protecting women\u27s rights and eliminating discriminations against them in Bangladesh with a view to find out the reasons of the discrepancy between these two. Another corollary objective of this paper is to provide some recommendations for enhancing and strengthening the women\u27s rights over the existing regime in Bangladesh. Social and analytical approach will be taken to satisfy these objectives. The scope of this paper will be confined mainly to the discussion of rights of Muslim women of this country due to the Muslim majority of its population