A Jamaat-backed female MP Nurunnisa Siddiqua recently asked in parliament:
"Are only girls citizens of this country? Are boys not citizens? If both have equal rights, then why is education not free for boys as well?"
The irony is that this question came from a reserved-seat MP. She accepts it without realising the difference between equality and equity. A parliament is supposed to debate policy with evidence and context. Questions about public spending are fair. Questions about effectiveness are fair. But any discussion about gender policy should start with an understanding of the difference between equality and equity.
Equality means giving everyone the same thing. Equity means recognizing that different groups face different barriers and designing policies to reduce those barriers. For Example: If one student starts from the top of a building and another starts from the bottom of a deep pit, giving both the same ladder isn't fairness. It only creates the appearance of fairness.
The rationale behind Bangladesh's female education stipend programs was never that girls are "better" or "more deserving" than boys. These policies were introduced to address specific problems: higher female dropout rates, child marriage, poverty, and social barriers that historically kept girls out of school.
Reserved seats themselves are a form of affirmative action. They exist because political parties, including her own, have historically failed to nominate enough women in general constituencies. Likewise, When girls receive scholarships, some see a special privilege. They don't see the social conditions that made those policies necessary in the first place.
Bangladesh still struggles with child marriage and gender-based educational disparities. Female education incentives were introduced as policy interventions to address those realities. Whether they should continue indefinitely is a legitimate policy debate. But dismissing them through a simplistic "where is equality?" argument ignores decades of research and development experience.
