Bangladesh's leading women's rights groups on Tuesday condemned a move to create 45 reserved seats for women in parliament, saying it would actually delay female empowerment.
Although the country's Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition are female, there are only five other women in the 300 seat assembly.
"We want to go to parliament through the direct vote of the people and speak for them on our own right," said Salma Ali, chief of Bangladesh National Women Lawyers' Association.
The government on Monday said it had decided to restore a previous system of gender-based seats to boost the representation of women in the legislature.
It said the new seats - which will bring the number of lawmakers to 345 - would be allocated to parties in proportion to the number of their elected seats.
Salma Ali called on political parties to field more female candidates rather than rely on the guaranteed seat system.
"We cannot accept anything that will again make us dependent on male lawmakers," she told Reuters. "We don't want to become a rubber stamp for what the men decide."
"There would be no empowerment of women in the real sense without direct elections," said Shamsun Nessa, leader of Naripokkho, another rights group.
Bangladesh had 30 nominated female parliamentarians until a law that made provision for them expired just before the last election in 2001. The next election is due by October, 2006.
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