Bangladesh is one of the highest rated countries in the world where women face violence and discrimination in different form both in public and private space. Violence against women is wide spread and common phenomena as well as one of the major problems in the society.

Most of the women in Bangladesh face rape, acid burning, sexual harassment, stalking, fatwa, male domination, beating, dowry as well as discrimination in everywhere in their daily life, which caused damage to the abused person and also the society as a whole.

Rape is most common form of abusing women in Bangladesh. It is not only caused harm to the victims, but also caused harm to whole society. If the raped woman is unmarried, she has lost her chastity, so she has lost her pawn in the marked of marriage. Whence the chastity is lost, spot prints dark mark on her family.

Ironically, in the parental society, the rapped woman is given in marriage to the rapist. Here, the rapist has no black spot, and does not have to be humiliated socially, because he is still a member of the dogma of paternalism.

Scale of rape is not same in all the countries in the world. Not all the societies equally encourage the rapists. Some societies are still free from rape to a limit, while some have serious tendency to rape. For example, West Sumatra is nearly free from rape. There, the rapist smalls himself, he smalls his family and relatives. In the society, everybody sue to his mankind.

The luck of rapist often succumbs to torture, sometime death. Sometime he is banished from his village, and did not allow returning.

On the other hand, some societies tend to raping, such as Bangladesh. What society gives a welcome fillip to raping? To answer the question it can be said, this is the society which is disordered, which has created fundamentalism, but does not have hard control, which is dominated by masculinity, where nobody has security.

And since women are the most venerable residents of the society, tendency to rape appears in its extreme view. This is why Bangladesh is growing the utopian of rape. Sometime they may rescue from the grip of rapist, but it is not possible to rescue from religious litigator.

As they take recourse to administration, court, media seeking justice of rape, this is her second and third time of being fall the pray of rape. This demands treatment by a women physician, judicial procedure by a women justice. The solution to prevent rape is establishment of women in every area from the country to the family.

And that should ensure equality to as same extent as of men. Though, perhaps it would not remove rape. Prevention of rape requires women to become as equal as of men, indoor and outdoor, in physical and brain mussel power.

Many gruesome crimes against women i.e. suicide of housewife, women repression, divorce, acidify, murder of housewife can mainly be attributed to the culture of dowry. About hundreds of thousand adult women are weighty concerns to their guardians only for the demand of dowry.

Presently dowry is treated as curse, thought nobody have their feat spared from its mouth. The reason of that is the culture of dowry is still cherished in every strata of society educated or not educated, rich or poor, and all behind the law and eyes of aware community.

In Bangladesh Dowry Prevention Act, 1980, give and take ‘dowry’ is punishable offence. Our culture of dowry and wedding gift is argued. A thing is treated as ‘dowry’ to a poor family, while the same thing may be seen as ‘gift’ to an educated gentle family. Whatever is said dowry or gift, its amount must be determined at first. No well definition is given in the dowry prevention act to characterize the term ‘dowry’ that what amount of money or thing shall be ‘dowry’ and what amount of money or thing shall be treated as ‘gift’.

We think if somebody is found to commit any transaction of dowry should be prevented from government service, and they should be suspended, and disqualified to be a candidate in election, in general we shall have to develop social movement agaist the culture. To reach the goal, our private institutions, Imam, elected representatives, and police department should play a vital part.

The combination of all these forces shall suffice to eradicate the culture of dowry gradually. If we can properly and practically apply the dowry prevention law, we can possibly save our hundreds of thousands of women from the hand of repression.

Paternalist, fundamentalist political craze still dominates all where the politics. Violent paternalism, democracy and communism not yet get rid of grip of men. Women have ever remained beyond the power of politics. In the history only a few names of women can be found who have ruled their country, but they are so small that ultimately becoming to myth. However women are now permitted to vote in most of the countries. They have political power but comparatively their active participation in politics is too low.

Beside this, when women joined in any procession and movement they suffers harassment and strip up of garments. This is why women do not interest to participate in politics. I stupefy to think that, our women still fall prey to repression albeit there is a Prime Minister and leader of the opposition part both woman. Yet today, women are ruined on roads, stripped even by the forces of the government.

In our country women representatives are limited. Paternalist society has the dogma that women do not deserve a direct election. I think that, the reserve seats for women are not in support of women liberty, but against it. Because of the women in the reserve seats cats their ideal under the feet of power. They do not have any political merit. They turned hunter of chance. They teach to be loyal to those in the power rather than gaining the right and their demands.

Recruit of women in service is directly linked with attenuation of violence against women. So we must create up-to-date education opportunity for women and increase quota in service. We must create opportunities so that every woman can develop herself with technical education to be self dependent. In case of women, self dependency and economical freedom may help diminish of repression of women. It is not possible to prevent repression only by litigation, unless we change our attitude and mental orientation from fallacy, to positive revolution of our social structure, and get rid of our narrowness.

We cannot build a gentle society or and community free of women violence unless we revitalize our sense of value. If we can all combine with unique harmony and conscious in a movement of mass awareness against the perpetrators and boycott them socially, then our effort may take in shape.

As strategy of anti women violence movement, we have to raise our voice to end violence against women in our thinking, works, literatures, poetry, play and all works right now. We have to establish the right of women as human right in the country from house to office, both in public and private space.

The Writer is a Human Rights Defender, Lawyer and Journalist; Founding Secretary General, JuticeMakers Bangladesh; email: [email protected], blog: www.shahanur.blogspot.com