Staff Reporter :
South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE) authorities on Saturday said in a press conference that gender-based wage discrimination appeared most visible in South Asian countries and the situation is worsening day by day.
Quoting a report of ILO, SAAPE said, the participation rate of women in the global labour market has been dropped from 52.4 percent to 49.6 percent.
“Globally, women earn 24 percent less wages than men on average. Women who became mothers of children in South Asia earn 35 percent less wages than men and women who did not become a mother earn 14 percent less wages than men in the region,” claimed the organization.
SAAPE arranged a press conference at the National Press Club on Saturday under the banner of “Lets end inequality together, make South Asia fair for all”.
Mushtaq Ali, Director of Incidin Bangladesh, presented a written speech in the press conference in this regard.
SAAPE Member Dr Rashid-E-Mahbub presided over the program while Bangladesh Nari Progati Sangha (BNPS) Executive Director Rokeya Kabir conducted the session.
Eminent Economist MM Akash, Politician Pangkaj Battacharya, General Secretary of Central Khelaghar Dr Lenin Chowdhury, Executive Director of Institute for Environment and Development (IED) Numan Ahmed Khan, among others, attended the program. It was said in the conference that the global poverty rate has 10.7 percent dropped dramatically from 94 percent in last two decades, but the scenario is different in South Asia.
According to the UNDP and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative’s global multidimensional poverty index 2018, South Asia is currently engulfed with poverty.
MM Akash said, “The inequality is increasing in the country at alarming rate. We can see its reflection in the Parliament. By the eighties, the Parliament was dominated by lawyers, teachers and the middle class. But nowadays, more than 60 percent of the Parliament Members are businessmen.”
