Highlighting the strong presence of women in Bangladesh parliament, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said it’s the symbol of women's empowerment.
Her remarks came on Tuesday while addressing the Women's Forum at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London.
"The Bangladesh parliament is the lone parliament in the world, where the Speaker of the House, the leader and deputy leader as well as the opposition leader are women. Our male members are very generous," she said, to applause and laughter from a gathering of leaders in the field of education and politics from the Commonwealth nations.
Speaking at the session ‘Education to Empower’, Hasina highlighted Bangladesh achievements in women’s education as part of a panel on ‘Building Bridges’ at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London.
"The ratio of girls attending school has surpassed the boys and we are now in the unique position to bring back the boys to school," said the prime minister.
Hasina hailed the founding father of the nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, for enshrining gender equality as a fundamental right in the country's Constitution.
"Without proper education it is not possible to empower women," she said.
In her speech, the prime minister said that her administration took several initiatives for women empowerment, including free education up to 12th grade for females, school meal programmes covering 2.84 million children and the free textbook scheme with as many as 362 million distributed in 2018 alone.
"Education for all will remain our prime objective as we graduate from a least developed country to a developing one, having met all the United Nations' requisites," she said.
Hasina is in the UK to attend the 25th Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting alongside 52 other leaders of the Commonwealth nations.