Background
The impressive economic growth of Bangladesh has not resulted in greater economic opportunities for the most vulnerable, especially young women and men. While it is anticipated that the economic growth will continue, the duration and direction of this growth leading to socioeconomic and political empowerment remains to be seen. Although several progressive industrial policies have been adopted, this has not translated to more and better jobs for all.
Young people comprise of 34%
of the 150 million population in Bangladesh. Despite the progress on access and basic competencies in education in the 2000s, quality and attainment remains low. Efforts to improve quality often fail in this context because teachers, typically a powerful political lobby, resist reforms that hold them accountable for their performance. Teachers are important to the political settlement and thus political regimes tend to tread carefully on their interests. As such, young people’s potential remains untapped due to the lack of a holistic planning and budgeting of resources to address quality of education and technical and vocational education training programmes that facilitate economic opportunities and livelihoods for the youth.
In addition to the lack of opportunities for technical and vocational training, young people also face problems accessing the formal economy: 36% of urban youth and 42% of rural youth are not in employment, education or training (NEET). Of the total urban employed labour force, 77.4% are employed in the informal sector
with over 60% residing in slum settlements. 80% of young women are at home and not in the labor force; two-thirds of young women are in NEET and two-thirds of school dropouts are women . It has been a challenge to mobilize women as a political force in a patriarchal, informal and clientelist context. Young women living in poverty, due to prevailing patriarchal and hierarchical sociocultural norms, are excluded from spaces of political influence and power. These invisible forces, coupled with a lack of access to resources, often leads to young people from vulnerable backgrounds remaining out of mainstream development processes.