The Election Commission (EC) has identified seven reasons behind the significant fall in the share of females among the fresh voters enrolled during the 2014-2015 period, reports UNB.
The causes behind the poor figure include women's reluctance about collecting birth certificates paying the stipulated fees which is needed to be voters, lack of awareness among rural women, lack of interest among unmarried and illiterate women to be voters.
The other reasons are reluctance of unmarried Hindu women to be voters at their parents' addresses, difficulties faced by women to produce national identity cards of their parents which are needed to be voters and long distance between the union-level voter registration centres and their houses and inclement weather.
Identifying the reasons, the Commission has instructed its field-level officials to engage local public representatives to ensure that women are enrolled spontaneously during the ongoing electoral rolls updating exercise that started on July 25.
The EC is scheduled to complete the three-phase data collection and taking photographs of possible voters by November to update the country's voter list.
The Commission at a notification issued on July 27 suggested its officials to engage members of Union Parishad and village police in the data collection process to motivate women to get enrolled.
The notification says the cooperation from the public representatives of the local government bodies, especially the representatives elected from reserved seats, is very essential to ensure women's registration.
The commission said the local representatives, who have already been included in the city corporation and upazila-level voter registration coordination committees, can play a significant role in conducting campaign over the programme alongside playing the due role inside the committee.
Election Commissioner Shah Nawaz said the commission has already instructed the officials to engage local representatives, particularly those who have got elected from reserved seats, in motivating women to be voters.
"We've asked our officials to keep the issue of women's registration under strict watch so that almost all eligible women can get enrolled in the voter list this time," he told the news agency.
The Commission has also instructed its officials for seeking the local administration's help to motivate possible female voters to be enrolled, Shah Nawaz added.
According to the EC's statistics, the share of women among the 43,75,436 fresh voters registered in 2014-2015 significantly declined. Of them, 20,45,757 (46.75 per cent) are female voters against 23,29,679 (53.25 per cent) male voters.
But the share of male and female voters was 49.11 per cent and 50.89 per cent respectively after the preparation of the country's voter list with photographs by the army-backed caretaker government in 2008.
However, Sushasoner Jonno Nagorik (Sujan) claimed that a total of 4,695,650 fresh voters came out until November 2014. Of them, females were 2,066,144 against 2,629,506 males. Among the fresh voters, the gender gap was 12 per cent, it noted.
Among the fresh voters registered in the voter lists in 2014-2015, the gender gap between male and female is more than 10 per cent in 28 districts out of 64 in the country, it claimed.
The gender gap among the fresh voters is 35.3 per cent in Feni, 30.82 per cent in Laxmipur, 26.44 per cent in Noakhali, 25.72 per cent in Chandpur, 23.4 per cent in Comilla, 22.58 per cent in Cox's Bazar and 20.84 per cent in Bhola, the NGO said.
The Sujan blamed apathy of enumerators in visiting door-to-door data collection in the latest update programmes and inadequate campaign on the issue for widening the gender gap.
According to the EC statistics, the number of the country's total voters was 81,133,448 in 2007-2008. Of them, the number of male voters was 39,845,741 (49.11 per cent) and that of female voters was 41,287,707 (50.89 per cent).
In 2009-2010, the number of total voters increased to 85,192,556. Of them, 42,139,625 were males (49.46pc) and 43,052,931 were females (50.54pc).
In 2012-2013, the number of total voters stood at 91,754,582 including 46,109,373 males (50.25pc) and 45,645,209 females (49.75pc).
In 2014, the number of total voters was 96,130,018 including 48,439,052 males (50.39pc) and 47,690,966 females (49.61pc).
EC shows seven reasons for fall in number of new female voters
FE Team | Published: August 01, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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