At least 12 women in Bangladesh took their own lives after being sexually harassed in the year 2017, says an Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK) report that kept track on 255 cases of female sexual harassment that year.
An Action Aid Bangladesh report has the findings that as many as 84 per cent women are at receiving end of either verbal or physical sexual harassment in public transport, 80 per cent in market places, 35 per cent face teasing and 15 per cent experience inappropriately touching in police stations.
A 2013 UN Women report found 76 per cent female students in higher educational institutions complaining of incidents of sexual harassment.
And last but not the least – in Bangladesh Mohila Parishad’s 2016 reckoning as many as 1,050 women and girls became rape victims – 166 of them were gang raped. Forty-four of those rape victims were also murdered by the perpetuators. All these statistics are mindboggling and awkwardly large. The numbers found in different researches are showing an alarming circumstance as far as women’s safe movement in public sphere is concerned in Bangladesh. Many women of varying ages have to endure various forms of harassments like; teasing, inappropriate touching, verbal abuses, mental and physical assaults and even rape in a shocking rate.
