Our Correspondent
RAJSHAHI, May 05: Discrimination in wages and low family and social status is thwarting women empowerment and their effort of becoming self reliant in Rajshahi and surrounding districts.
For time immemorial, womenfolk of the district, specially rural women, have been playing a vital role in maintaining household chores and working as farm labourers. Almost all rural women are also directly involved in production and processing of foods. Despite their involvement in food production, many of them also work as construction workers, brick kiln workers, factory workers, poultry farm workers and, of course, house wives and mothers.
Female farmhands are engaged in all sorts of agricultural jobs including processing and preservation of seeds, making seed-bed and sowing seed there, caring of saplings, preparing of land, transplanting of saplings, preparing of bio-fertiliser to be used in land, harvesting of crops and processing of the crops. By applying their conventionally inherited knowledge for thousands of years, rural women have been able to make a revolutionary change in improving the crop production.
All the works stated above are done by the women folk of the district by their own hands and technique. But, in this age of corporate globalisation, female farm hands were facing the worst situation elsewhere in their work places, in their society and even to their family members. By facing all the odds in their houses and at their work places, thousands of these women folk were working at the crop fields, farms, roads and house construction sites and was playing a vital role in improving the economic status of their family and in development of the country. But these women folk are discriminated, harassed and even tortured everywhere- at their work places and even at their own homes. They are hugely discriminated over the payment of their wages; they do not have any state recognition of their jobs. As a result, they are being cheated and deceived.
Moreover, the female labourers do not have their proper working environment and they always face health hazard at their work.
According to a survey, among all female workers, 90 per cent suffer from various contagious diseases including itching, whooping cough, dysentery and diarrhoea. Due to utter poverty, they do not have the ability to visit doctors for treatment and to purchase medicine.
The report shows at least 5.0 per cent of those female workers suffer from complex ovarian complication. Again, during their pregnancy, either they fail to work or they are not permitted to work by their employers. Even, there is no fixed working hours for a female worker and the wages of a female worker is always far less than that of a male labourer. Many employers also remain reluctant to pay the dues of female workers in time and the arrears keep building up for a long time.
During the monsoon and summer, the female workers have to work in the field in rain and hot sunshine braving the menace of poisonous snakes and insects. In case of any accident or fatal situation during work, a female worker does not get any assistance from the employers. Being engaged most of day time in work, children of those female workers are deprived from the motherly fondness, love and affection. For the same reason, those children failed to take education in schools. They survey was conducted among 15,451 female day labourers and 2,023 male labourers of Tanore, Godagari, Mohanpur and Paba upazilas.
Anima Rani of Jogisho village, Kazali Hembrom and Parvin Khatun of Binodepur village under Mohanpur upazila were working to repair Binodepur road on Monday. Anima Rani (26) said, after the days hard work, she returned house in the evening and failed to take care of her children. Her entire body seems to broken down with strong headache. She has to cook the food, feed the children and other members of the house and then she went to sleep. "I don't know how my night is spent and rising early in the morning, again I hasten to go my work, often by taking the rest of the meal cooked at night", said Anima.
Amena Begum (46) was seen working at a construction site at Pathanpara area of the city. She said, even after working same time with male workers, she is paid Tk 350 a day while the male member is paid Tk 450. Out of the money, she has to pay Tk 50 to the head artisan because the head artisan manages work for her.
Matiur Rahman, a contractor of labourers at Paba upazila, informed, the female workers are easily available and they could not do the heavy work as a male worker can do. As a result, the wages of a female worker is always less than a male worker.
Fayezullah Chowdhury, executive director of Barendra Unnayan Prochestha, said the contribution of female workers in our national economy is a lot. But, our society does not regard the contribution of female workers with a positive outlook. As a result, their contribution in our economy remained untraced. Due to our congested, conventional outlook about female folk, their contribution in economic activities has not yet been recognised and for women empowerment the recognition of contribution of female workers in development of the country must be ensured.
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