With immense pleasure we have compiled a list of brave and intellectual women who have made a name for themselves and their country; Bangladesh prides herself on her daughters and their triumphs:
Kishwar Chowdhury taking Bangali Cuisine International with Herself!
Kishwar Chowdhury, the Bangladeshi contestant, competed in the finals of the most prestigious global cooking competition, MasterChef Australia 2021, and was crowned with the second runners-up position in the most sought-after competition in the culinary kingdom.
With every new episode, she has represented and reinvented the Bengali cuisine in front of the MasterChef Australia judges as well as the whole world, with dishes including ‘khichuri’, ‘maach bhaja’, ‘bhorta’, ‘fuchka-chotpoti, ‘paan’ etc. This paved her way to the Top 3 grand finalists of the competition as judges couldn’t have enough of the intricate flavor profiling behind her curry delicacies, and she became the first Bangladeshi to achieve the feat.
This Culinary prodigy is Australia-born and brought up whose ethnicity is half Indian (Kolkata) and half Bangladeshi. She identifies as Bangladeshi being more attached to her paternal roots and her noticeable penchant for Bengali palate. One thing is for sure, there is nothing purer than how Bengali her food is and how non-whitewashed her pronunciation in describing her cooking is. There is nobody who represents the mothers in every household serving MasterChef-worthy dishes on the regular.
Badhon starrer Bangladeshi Film Receives Standing Ovation at the Cannes Film Festival
Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s second directorial feature Rehana Maryam Noor stars Azmeri Haque Badhon as the protagonist where the film sees her as an eponymous private medical college teacher who witnesses an unexpected incident while leaving college one day. The story unravels how Noor starts to protest against the incident and the system.
When the film premiered in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section of the 74th Cannes Film Festival, Rehana Maryam Noor made history after the audience gave a standing ovation in appreciation. A tearful Badhon was noticed as the centerpiece to the ovation, overwhelmed by the tremendous praise she received in exchange for her incredible hard work and finesse. Coming from an industry where women are largely handed “doormat roles” in films and a nation that highly stigmatizes its women in media, this divorced warrior has had to fight a long battle being a single mother simultaneously honing her craft to an international standard, and we are here to clap for her as she claims the flag of Bangladesh proudly across international skies.
The 25-year-old British-Bangladeshi Changing The World Overnight
As the world is still grappling to combat the outbreaks of the pandemic, Sadia Khanam has developed an antiseptic spray, ‘Voltic’, against Covid-19. Her invention ‘Voltic’ can kill all kinds of pathogens (viruses, bacteria, fungi, etc) on any surface. Spraying just once can make a place free of coronavirus for a fortnight. Hospitals in the UK have confirmed the spray is 100% effective in killing coronavirus. This spray can also minimize the cleaning cost of hospitals by about 70%.
Sadia has already received orders worth more than $10 million. This spray is being used by the National Health Service in the UK at various hospitals and care homes across the country as well as at NASA labs. Sadia has already got orders for her ‘Voltic’ spray from 13 countries around the world. Sadia’s grandfather Azmat Ali migrated to the United Kingdom in 1964 from Sylhet.
Bengali Muslim To Win A Seat At New York & City Council
Shahana Hanif has made history as the first Muslim woman to represent New York City Council District 39. She will replace the incumbent Brad Lander, to also be the first South Asian representative for Brooklyn’s District 39.
Shana, a former Lander staffer, had endorsements from multiple progressive groups and succeeded in attracting huge support and reputation among the communities of her District. Her priorities are “Green New Deal for Brooklyn,” Support Gender Equity, Divest from Policing, Participatory City Government, among others.
First Lawyer In Australia From The Bangladeshi Garo Community
Ms. Eleanor Rema is the first person from the indigenous Garo community of Bangladeshi origin to study law in Australia. After completing her degree, she – a second-generation immigrant from Bangladesh- is now on her way to becoming the first Garo lawyer in Australia of her kind. Eleanor moved with her family from Bangladesh to Australia in 1993 at the age of five. She believes in equal rights and equal opportunities for everyone to get justice.
Dhaka University Scientists Discover New Antibiotics on Jute Seeds
Bangladeshi father-daughter duo under Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF) has successfully completed the genome sequencing of the SARS Cov-2 virus in Bangladesh. SARS Cov-2 is the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Genome sequencing is the process of identifying the nucleotides — the basic building block of DNA and RNA — present in a certain cell and their arrangement.
Dr. Senjuti Saha, the scientist who led the team of three was accompanied by: Roly Malaker and Md Saiful Islam Shajib. Dr. Senjuti’s father, eminent microbiologist, and executive director of the organization, Dr. Samir Kumar Saha also gave leadership to the team. “The SARS Cov-2 virus cells contain RNA. The virus is made up of about 29,000 bases and we had to figure out what the sequence was,” explained Dr. Senjuti.
Doing genome sequencing of the virus means that scientists can begin to understand which strain it is, which country it came from, and when it came to Bangladesh.
3 Bangladeshi women on `The Asian Scientist 100` list
Three Bangladeshi women have been included in the sixth edition of the Singapore-based magazine Asian Scientist under the headline ‘The Asian Scientist 100’ for their important contribution to research published in April of 2021.
The website of the Singapore-based magazine Asian Scientist selected researchers and inventors for playing a key role in tackling this year’s major issues, climate change, and Covid-19, and among the Bangladeshi scientists enlisted in it are Dr. Salma Sultana, Chairman of Livestock Advancement Foundation (MALF), Dr. Ferdousi Qadri, and Professor Saima Sabrina, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).
Bangladeshi Archer Diya Siddique Bags Wild Card Entry To Tokyo Olympics
The 17-year-old Bangladeshi archer Diya Siddique ranked 155th in World Ranking, gave her opponent, who is ranked-31, a run for her money till the end before bowing out of the Tokyo Olympics in a heartbreaking tiebreaker.
The Archery Federation had earlier nominated Diya Siddique along with three athletes from three other for wild card entries into the Tokyo Olympics. After expectations sored higher following Ruman Sana, archer Diya Siddique showed incredibly impressive performance in the Olympics, but sadly she couldn’t live her dream of stepping into the second round of recurve women’s individual event. Diya tied the five-set match to 5-5 set points before losing 10-9 in a one-arrow tiebreaker to Karyna Dziominskaya of Belarus.
After the end of the Olympics mission, Ruman Sana and Diya Siddique duo finished 9th position in the recurve mixed team event while Diya herself ranked 33rd position in the women’s recurve individual event.
Nineteen changemakers from Bangladesh honored at 2021 Diana Awards
Established in memory of Princess Diana in 1999, the Diana Award is a prestigious accolade given out by the charity supported by Princess Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. The Diana Award celebrates young changemakers carrying out humanitarian activities. Nineteen young changemakers including six women from Bangladesh received the award.
Through Moshal Mental Health Foundation, Maria Mumu has been working to destigmatize mental health problems in the country and taking initiatives to make mental healthcare more accessible, affordable, and effective for everyone, including providing one free session to every client of theirs.
Anika Subah Ahmad Upoma established Evolution360 in 2016 to replicate the #HeForShe campaign; it focuses on youth development and women empowerment by promoting gender equality through various social projects. Anika wishes to create a gender-equal world, eradicate gender-based violence and implement SDG-5.
Lamea Tanjin Tanha founded TransEnd, a social organization that empowers the transgender communities through education, training, employment, and entrepreneurship. Lamea primarily works to arrange various social awareness campaigns and programs that educate people about the gender spectrum. She also organized several fund-raisers and social projects to cater to the plight of these communities.
Khadiza Tul Qubra Binte Ahsan founded WeMen View in 2018 to fight back against gender-based violence. Her organization has so far impacted more than 1000 young people through workshops and campaigns. Additionally, she also launched a collaborative project to rehome families affected by Cyclone Amphan.
Gulnahar Mahbub Monika co-founded Deshi Ballers because she strives to increase opportunities for women in basketball. She has been actively organizing events and tournaments that help women and girls to build sisterhood, reduce stress and empower young people to become leaders. As a part of Bangladesh’s first female-only basketball community, Deshi Ballers, she hopes to create a women-only national league in the future.
Sidratul Moontaha Chowdhury, Program Manager of Technovation, works to inspire the next generation of females into exploring STEM fields of education. By opening the ‘Bangladesh Chapter of Technovation Girls’, she navigates young girls to not only thrive in an underrepresented field but also to drive powerful changes to balance out the inequality in near future.
Afruza Tanzi, the Project Lead and Manager for Protibha, is fighting to crush gender stereotypes and the stigma surrounding working women by empowering women in marginalized communities to gain financial emancipation through skill-development training and workshops. She has provided financial literacy classes to over 700 young girls and women, arts and crafts training for 100 women, and commercialized over 1,000 artisan products.
This year has been revolutionary for Bangladeshi women in terms of placing themselves on the globe and breaking all stereotypes held against them in terms of culinary art, entrepreneurship, STEM research, politics, sports, etc. The year will truly belong to women when we see them having equal access to every opportunity and there will be no more glass ceilings to break.