Gender Bias of Government Agencies and NGOs in the Provision of Services to the Rural Poor in Bangladesh.

Within Bangladesh there is evidence of gender discrimination which causes a lack of empowerment and poverty among women, particularly in rural areas. Thus, women in rural areas require improved service delivery with personal and customised services from the service providers (government and non-government organisations) of poverty alleviation programs to better combat poverty. To explore the differences in opinion between male and female beneficiaries in assessing the service delivery effectiveness of providers, the researcher has developed a multi-dimensional effectiveness scale. The methodology is based on primary data collected from 78 randomly chosen villages in Bangladesh. Significant differences of opinion between male and female beneficiaries have been identified. In most geographic areas, female beneficiaries reported a need for improvement across the entire scale of items measuring the effectiveness of service delivery. This suggests that they do not receive the same level of service as their male counterpart, a finding which carries the hallmarks of gender discrimination.