Reneka is a youth advocate who studies Anthropology and lives with her family in Dhaka. Reneka is very outspoken about gender-based violence and dreams of a world where women and girls feel safe and gender discrimination no longer exists. She wishes to fully enjoy her civic and political rights and wants to see a world where every voice is heard; regardless of race, gender, sex, religion, and class. She has been involved in the National Girl Child Advocacy Forum as a youth leader since 2017 and has participated in various workshops on gender-based violence. She has also trained volunteers and campaigned in schools and universities to raise awareness and tackle harmful gender norms.
Reneka has also been campaigning to achieve the sustainable development goals and participated in a youth summit “Accelerating the SDGs” by youth wheel in 2019. With the support of the Girls Advocacy Alliance, she took part in the Voluntary National Review as part of the civil society.
Reneka says, “As I’m a student of Anthropology, I always want to know how my society functions and when it starts functioning differently. From my childhood, I have been watching Girls and Women suffering from various problems like an abusive relationship and various kinds of harassment. Since then, I started trying to understand why and how gender violence is happening in my community and joined the National Girl Child Advocacy Forum to train and contribute myself as far as I can.”
In Reneka’s society, girls are bound to behave in a certain way where girls are not considered worthy enough to make the right decisions for themselves. Often, girls’ consent does not matter which is one of the main causes behind child marriage. And thus girls don’t have career aspirations. The enforcement of the law in Bangladesh is not that visible, so the degree of violence against the girl is not decreasing as per expectations. Besides law enforcement, lack of social awareness is also responsible for this crisis. As a result, many families don’t allow girls’ education, sports, and movement. Therefore, girls and young women are not getting equal opportunities and rights to build their agency. From childhood, girls get used to remaining silent in decision-making activities. As a result, even after becoming financially independent, girls can’t exercise control over their resources. Generally, most of the girls are doing all household chores and helping the earning members of their family. So these insignificant works prevent girls from enjoying many opportunities which the boys enjoy. Consequently, girls are not getting equal opportunities and also not being valued or appreciated like boys for their contributions to society.
Reneka wants to experience an equitable scenario in that hurtful REALITY where a rape or acid victim won’t feel ashamed or burden to their family and society rather the criminals will be brought to justice. She dreams of a society where girls can share consent for marriage and no longer have those invisible extra barriers to start every struggle in society. She wants a life ahead where she’ll never have to feel that just because of her sex she is not safe to experiment with every opportunity which is enjoyed by her same-age brother. Reneka wants to live in a world where gender discrimination won’t exist! She dreams that at all levels every voice will be heard without any discrimination. She wishes everyone in the society will respect girls and value their contributions like boys in both the public and private spheres.
She wishes to work as a young influencer in her society and at a global level to shift the power relation for gender equality.