Protection is not inclusion

Thirty names, and not one of them a woman's. That was Bangladesh Bank's list of officials selected for a 12-week Applied AI course at Dhaka University, reported this week in The Business Standard. It landed between World Population Day and World Youth Skills Day, a week when the country talked of little besides its youth, its skills, and its demographic dividend. A year ago, I argued in The Daily Star that growth that excludes women is not only unjust but also unsustainable. This week supplied the illustration.

The report says around 20 percent of the 473 applicants were women; none made the list. The central bank's explanation: classes end at 8:30pm, it is the rainy season, and attending an evening course could create difficulties for female officials. They will be considered, we are told, in a second phase.

The women of Bangladesh Bank have already answered this logic better than any columnist could. They routinely work until 9pm, sometimes 11pm, and the institution provides no transport home. If safety after dark were truly the concern, it has had years of late evenings to address it. Safety was never solved for women; it was simply invoked against them.

To be clear, this is not about pointing fingers at Bangladesh Bank or any single institution. The episode matters because it is a symptom of a larger disease, and the pattern deserves a name: protection as exclusion. When an institution encounters a genuine problem — unsafe streets, inadequate transport, poor lighting — it has two options. It can fix the problem, or it can remove the women. The second option is cheaper, faster, and dressed in the language of care. It is also how women disappear from night shifts, field postings, foreign assignments, and now from artificial intelligence.

AI is not just another training. The first cohort of any capability-building programme becomes the institution's internal experts — the people consulted, promoted, and put in charge when the technology arrives in earnest. A "second phase" is not a delayed invitation; it is a queue behind thirty men who will already be a year ahead. In the future of work, a year is a career.

This is more than an HR misstep; a selection list shows how an institution thinks when no one is checking. Last week, I sat in the Centre for Policy Dialogue's discussion on whether Bangladesh is ready for the future of work. Labour market data cited by CPD show roughly 1.3 million jobs lost in 2024 — around 90 percent of those losses borne by women. Projections suggest up to 60 percent of female garment jobs could vanish by 2041. CPD's warning is precise: women are at greater risk not only because of automation, but because of exclusion from emerging sectors.

Read that last line again, and then read the central bank's list. The researchers also named the force that will decide whether Bangladesh's digital transition includes or excludes: institutional agility. One of our most powerful institutions just showed which way its reflexes bend.

Women in Bangladesh already exit the workforce through doors we know well — early marriage, the mid-career drop-out when family demands collide with inflexible workplaces. Digitisation now threatens to close the doors at the bottom of the economy. If institutions close the doors at the top too, we should stop pretending the demographic dividend is coming. A dividend is not paid on half a population.

None of this requires villains. The bank can still fix this at little cost: publish transparent selection criteria, arrange transport for evening trainees, and include qualified women in this batch, not a promised phase two. Every public institution designing digital upskilling should treat this episode as a checklist of what not to do. Inclusion will not happen by default: investing in women's skills for the coming job market must be a conscious decision — made in budgets, in institutions, and in selection lists.

Bangladesh wants a trillion-dollar economy powered by a young, skilled workforce. That workforce is half female. Every seat we deny a qualified woman today is a leadership role she will not hold in 2035, a technology she will not shape, a dividend we will not collect. The rain, for the record, falls on men too.

Shamima Akhter is a corporate affairs and communications leader who has served large and reputed organisations in Bangladesh.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.