Time to speak up, women

Ahead of the upcoming elections, political parties have started announcing incentives to benefit women, but what do women truly seek for genuine gender parity?

The theme of International Women’s Day 2024, to be celebrated later this week — Invest in Women, Accelerate Progress — is a reminder that the world needs to change to achieve anything close to gender equality. There’s no better time than an election for a reality check. In the year of elections (with about 50 of them spread across 2024), when political leaders make their pitch and voters decide, how are women positioned and how central are the issues related to them?

Sheikh Hasina recently won a fourth successive term as Prime Minister of Bangladesh. While she may be the world’s