Every year, Bangladesh proudly celebrates its rising female literacy rate. On paper, we are a success story. From urban university campuses to colleges in rural districts, classrooms are full of ambitious, hardworking young women. They study till late, pass their exams, and graduate with degrees.
But behind these inspiring statistics also exists a heartbreaking reality. When I speak to many of these educated women, in cities and villages alike, and ask them what they plan to do with their hard-earned knowledge, I am often met with a blank stare. There is no plan or destination. Their years of academic toil were spent not with the intention to build a personal future, but to enhance a portfolio or biodata for the marriage market.
Education for many women has largely been hijacked, reduced to an item to check off a list of traits which make a girl a more “attractive” bride.
We are all taught a simple, universal proverb from our earliest days in primary school: “A life without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.” We memorise this phrase to secure marks on our exams, yet we fail completely to apply it in the case of half our population. We are launching millions of educated ships into the sea of life while actively denying them a rudder. This systemic visionlessness is a double-sided tragedy, and both sides, parents and young women themselves, share the guilt.
Even when a young girl harbours a genuine ambition to be well-educated, her family often dampens it. They treat her degree almost as a transaction. To such families, a daughter’s education is not a path towards her self-actualisation or financial security, but an investment to raise the family’s social standing in the matrimonial market.
However, young women also learn and reinforce this stereotype. When we accept a life without a vision, we surrender our own power. Many settle into the comfortable illusion that a husband’s income is a permanent safety net.
But that illusion shatters as domestic reality dawns on them. In Bangladesh, why has high female literacy not brought a proportional drop in domestic violence? When abuse starts, a woman without a vision and without a sense of her own capability feels utterly paralysed.
To be clear, this is not an argument against one choosing to be a homemaker. Homemaking is a valid, respectable choice. This is an argument about women’s mental freedom and independent survival.
Too many educated women feel culturally obligated to put up with physical and emotional abuse as they have been conditioned to believe they are incapable of surviving on their own. They hold degrees, yet they look at the world outside and think, “I cannot earn my own bread and butter.” They stay in toxic, abusive marriages because they lack the confidence to use the very tools they spent years studying to acquire.
But one’s education is their shield against the ills of the world. If a traditional job is not possible, an educated woman today has other avenues open to her: she can run a business from home, teach, consult, and build a livelihood in many ways. She already has the capability to do this. What she lacks is the mental permission to believe in her own agency.
Parents must stop raising their daughters to be decorative, credentialed trophies. They must ask their daughters, “What is your vision for your life?” rather than focusing on what kind of husband they want for her.
Young women of Bangladesh must not let their hard work be reduced to a single line on a biodata. They must find their rudder and determine their own vision. A woman who possesses a vision for her own life ceases to feel inferior and gains the power to walk away from any situation where her dignity is compromised.
Shimu Akhter is a law student based in Dhaka, working on gender justice and human rights.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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