31% women feel unsafe outside: BIDS

One in every three women says they feel unsafe outside, the Bangladesh Institute Of Development Studies (BIDS) found while researching the gender gap in safety perceptions.

The issue was discussed on the closing day of a three-day programme at the Annual BIDS Conference on Development 2021 at Lakeshore Hotel in the capital on Friday.

The session’s topic was Women’s Employment and Safety Perceptions: Evidence from Low-Income Neighborhoods of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The correlation between female labour supply and safety perception was also highlighted at the conference.

A survey was conducted between women and men aged 15-64 years and the collected data represented the slums and low- income areas of Dhaka city and a low-income area from the Greater Statistical Metropolitan Area.

The survey’s finding is that 31 per cent of women feel unsafe outside where only 4 per cent of men feel unsafe outside. The gender gap is 27 per cent.

The safety perception indicates that if individuals respond feeling physically safe all the time on the streets on which their homes are located, or they feel physically safe when on their own outside their communities.

On the other hand, if individuals do not go outside their communities, if they report only feeling physically safe in the daytime, or they do not at all feel safe in their streets or going outside their communities.

Providing women equal opportunities to grow by establishing an environment where they feel safe is necessary to achieving economic development.

BIDS recommended some short- and long-term solutions to reduce the gender gap and ensure women’s workplace safety.

The short-term or immediate measures are ensuring adequate streetlights, providing gender sensitive training to law enforcement, and making security officers and city surveillance widely available.