According to the latest statistics from World Bank, Bangladesh’s female labor force participation rate is 36.14%. The male participation on the other hand is at 83.83%. The low participation of females is dragging down the overall GDP growth of the country.
Increasing female participation in the workforce will increase the income of women and girls and increase the overall per capita income of the country. However, this shouldn’t come at the cost of lower male participation. In recent years, the male labor participation has decreased in Bangladesh. This is a worrying trend as shown in the graph below (it’s from World Bank).
Lower male participation can lead to social issues and increase crime and drug addiction. Bangladesh needs to create large number of jobs for its unemployed male youth. There are several sectors where this could be achieved.
One of which is the digital information technology sector.