Introduction
The term women's rights refer
to freedom and entitlements of women and girls of
all ages. These rights may or may not be institutionalized, ignored or
suppressed by law, local custom, and behavior in a particular society. These
liberties are grouped together and differentiated from broader notions of human rights because
they often differ from the freedoms inherently possessed by or recognized for
men and boys, and because activists for this issue claim an inherent historical
and traditional bias against the exercise of rights by women and girls.[1]
Issues
commonly associated with notions of women's rights include, though are not
limited to, the right: to bodily integrity and autonomy; to vote(suffrage); to hold public office; to work;
to fair wages or equal pay; to own property; to education;
to serve in the military or be conscripted; to enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and
religious rights. Women and their
supporters have campaigned and in some places continue to campaign for the same
rights as men.[2] All
family laws- Hindu, Muslim, Parsee, Sikh, Jain and Christian personal laws-have
certain common features. All of them recognize the man as the head of the
household, they sanction patrilineage and patrilocality, they treat women as
men’s property and consider the father to be the natural guardian and they
perpetuate double standards in sexual morality and property rights. It is
common knowledge among those reasonably acquainted with law that women are
greatly deprived of their rights within the laws that govern crucial aspects of
the man woman relationship: marriage and divorce, custody of children and
guardianship rights, alimony and maintenance for divorced women as well as
property rights. The question of women has acquired great importance throughout
the world today among all communities. This is for obvious reasons. For
centuries, women have been in total subjugation in male-dominated patriarchal
societies. It has been a “natural law” to regard women as the inferior sex and
for them to submit to male authority for the smooth functioning of society in
its day to day progress.
The women in
Law relating to women’s
right
The Bangladesh Constitution declares equal rights for men
and women in all spheres of public life.[5]
The word 'public' seems to be a major clue to solving this riddle. It is only
in the spheres of state and public life that equality is guaranteed through the
Constitution. This means that in the private or personal sphere women are
pretty much on their own. So even if her husband for whatever reason
continuously tortures a woman, until she is killed, the state is unlikely to
intervene, as it is we say, too gentlemanly to invade the privacy of the
individual. The result is that women continue to be treated as inferior human
beings by their husbands and by a society that tends to victimize victims
instead of helping them.