Empowerment of women is one of the national goals of Bangladesh. To achieve this goal, Bangladesh adopted various strategies like elimination of the gap between male and female, creating gainful employment for women, mainstreaming of women in the development process etc., in her Five-Year Plans and other national documents. But the policy makers are not much aware of the fact that none of these strategies will be successful in empowering women until and unless they are educated, since without education women can neither be employed gainfully nor can be integrated in the national development process. Education has multi-dimensional impacts on women and these impacts are influential in empowering women. Researches show that education has highly positive impact on both women’s productivity and their social and political power in the society.
It was found that woman’s wage rate increases by 10% for each extra year’s education (Human Development in South Asia 1998). Researches also show that investment on women’s education has a direct correlation with eradication of gender discrimination in various spheres of life. Path-breaking findings of an on-going research of BIDS reveal that women’s education is one of the most influential factors for breaking the stereotyped gender roles, which are the biggest stumble on the way of women’s social and economic empowerment. This research further shows that education raises confidence and aspiration of girl children more than that of their counterpart boy children.

• Publisher: Bangladesh Nari Progati Sangha (BNPS)
• Published Date: 01/05/2005
• Author: Dr. Pratima Paul-Majumder
• Price: 60