Bangladesh

Forty-five new women MPs, elected to reserved seats, will be sworn in on Mar 29. Speaker Abdul Hamid will administer oaths to 36 new Awami League MPs, five of BNP and one of Jatiya Party, said Shawkat. The candidates were elected unopposed on Mar 19, as parties nominated exactly 45 candidates to the reserved women's seats, allotted on strength.
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The newly elected 45 women members of parliament from the reserved seats were sworn in on Sunday at the oath room of national parliament building in Dhaka. Speaker M Abdul Hamid administered the oath to the lawmakers this morning. Of the 45 women lawmakers, 36 are of the ruling Awami League, four of the Jatiya Party of HM Ershad and five of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)
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At a public meeting in Noakhali district in the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh, Agriculture Minister Motia Chowdhury had a strange encounter. Throughout the proceedings, a group of men stood with their backs toward her. The men, as it turned out, were conservative Muslim clerics, who found it difficult to accept a woman as a leader, but at the same time could not pass up the opportunity of listening to her speech.
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Women lawmakers of the ninth parliament at an orientation programme today pledged to work together for empowering the womenfolk politically and towards removing disparity between men and women. It is time for women to stood under a single umbrella and worked on a common agenda to serve society and the nation, they said.
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"The number of reserved seats for women in parliament will be increased to 100 and there will be direct election in these seats," Finance Minister Muhith told the House while presenting the budget for 2009-10 yesterday. The women MPs have so far been nominated by political parties on the basis of the proportion of their representation in parliament. At present, only 45 seats are reserved for women in the Bangladesh parliament.
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Sheikh Hasina, the winner of Bangladesh's parliamentary election last month, was sworn in as the country's prime minister on Tuesday, ending two years of rule by an army-backed interim government.It will be her second time in the office.
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Politics is essentially led by women in Bangladesh, said Kamal. Bangladesh's current head of government is Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, while the heads of opposition were women as well for the past two decades. Women also make up 18.6 percent, 65 of 345 seats of the Bangladeshi parliament, currently.
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In Bangladesh, traditional gender roles keep most women from gaining political power. A recent forum, "Celebrating Women's Leadership in Bangladesh," brought together female MPs and other Bangladeshi women with political aspirations to inspire and encourage them to run for office and to work together across party lines to increase women's political participation in the country.The Bangladesh Alliance for Women Leadership (BDAWL), an organization of prominent women leaders, hosted the November meeting, which was prompted by a visit to Bangladesh from Melanne Verveer, U.S.

Constitution amendment body faces difficulties in introducing direct election system. The parliamentary special committee on constitutional amendments agreed in principle to propose increasing reserved seats for women in the House but it is facing difficulties to introduce direct election to the seats preserved. Members of the committee yesterday in a meeting at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban discussed two propositions for increasing the number of reserved seats for women.