Safety of female students at educational institutions

When we turn the pages of a newspaper or browse an online news portal, we come across many headlines reporting cases of rapes, molestation, sexual harassment, violence against girls and women etc. The list goes on and we can no longer call any place in Bangladesh safe for girls and women. The threat to girls is now growing even in their own educational institutions and at the hands of their own teachers and classmates. A recently conducted study reveals such a grim picture, saying that around 74 per cent female students in the country face violence and harassment at their educational institutions.
There are different types of harassment at educational institutions, the study finds. Over 11 per cent students said they faced harassment by male teachers, which is the highest. This is followed by physical harassment by male classmates. Around 4.8 per cent female students got objectionable messages on mobile phones from classmates or seniors. About 5.5 per cent students face sexual harassment by male teachers while 21.3 per cent classmates behave in an indecent way. Female students also hear humiliating remarks both from male and female teachers. If things go worse, parents often restrict the movement of their daughters as a protective measure. But this can never be a solution.
Every educational institution is supposed to have committees to deal with such oppression and harassment. However, in many cases such a committee does not exist in reality. The authorities should come forward and take proper steps to make our educational institutions safer for female students.

Ashikujaman Syed,
Research Assistant,
Bioinformatics Research Lab,
Center for Research Innovation and Development (CRID),
syedashikujaman@yahoo.com