Bangladesh Crystallographic Association

Statement on Gender Balance

In Bangladesh the gender balance situation was rather poor till 1980s. However, the issue was taken into serious consideration from 1990s. Various measures were adopted to improve the gender balance in all the sectors of Bangladesh. In 2022, the University Grants Commission of Bangladesh (UGC) reported that, in the 53 public universities, a total number of 44,15,649 students had enrolled, of which 48% are female students. In 2022, a report from the Education Ministry of Bangladesh showed even better gender balance in the primary, secondary, and higher secondary schools and colleges of Bangladesh (the ratio is almost 50:50).

In the recent years, it has been observed that on an average about 30%-35% female participants attend conferences/seminars/workshops in biosciences and applied sciences organized in Bangladesh. However, this ratio is a bit less (around 20%-25%) in the conferences of basic sciences.

In the early days of crystallography, Professor S. N. Bose, a faculty of the University of Dhaka (1921-1945) developed his own camera to collect X-ray data and published excellent papers on X-ray crystallography. But later a few scientists were interested to continue research on structural sciences in Bangladesh. From the 1990s, scientists of Bangladesh again started working on materials science, nano-materials and other structural sciences. Bangladesh scientists working in the fields of crystallography formed Bangladesh Crystallographic Association (BCA) in the year 2011.

Since 2013, BCA has been regularly organizing its conferences and other crystallographic activities to promote crystallography in Bangladesh. So far, BCA has organized eight conferences, numerous series of lectures, workshops, etc. In the first few conferences (1^st -4^th), female participation was around 15%-18%. However, in the last few conferences (5^th -8^th) female participation has improved (on average to 24%). The 9^th conference of BCA is scheduled on 10 -11 January 2025. BCA expects that the gender balance will be even better in this upcoming 9^th  conference of BCA.

BCA is committed in adopting active measures, both at present and in the future in promoting gender balance in all of its activities.