Assessing Rural Women’s Satisfaction with Public Services in Bangladesh: Case Study of Provision of Public Services by Civil Society Organization

Poverty continues to ravage about 10 percent of the world population. Efforts to eradicate poverty in all its forms remain elusive. The historical decline in global poverty rate experienced from 10.1% in 2015 to 8.6% in 2018 and even further down to 8.3% in 2019 reverses to 9.2% in 2019 due to COVID-19 pandemic. Although the poverty rate is projected to decrease to 8.6% in 2022, efforts to lower it further are confounded by the emerging global uncertainties including the Ukraine-Russia war, the global economic crisis, and catastrophes of earthquakes, and adverse effects of climate change. Tackling poverty in a country requires establishing national definitions, setting targets, and undertaking assessments on how the poor access and are satisfied by public services by government and other development actors including civil societies. This requires understanding the socio-economic circumstances of the poor and the factors that influence the ability of service providers to meet the expectations for the poor. This case study examines how rural women are satisfied with the public services provided through civil society programmes within four villages in the northern parts of Bangladesh. It concludes that preconditional public awareness, education, and training coupled with access to financial services can enhance rural women’s access to health services. In addition, age, family size, annual income, and farm size are important socio-economic considerations for informing civil society on how to design health services for rural women. Further, civil society needs to improve overall capacity including adequacy of personnel to effectively deliver public services.