More women for Bangladesh chamber

Opposition leader Sheikh Hasina is one of the few women in parliament

Bangladesh's cabinet has approved a proposal to increase the number of women in parliament.

Forty-five seats new seats will be set aside for women.

But many women's groups have complained that the new MPs will not be directly elected and that the measures do not go far enough.

According to the proposals, the seats would be distributed among the political parties in proportion to their support at the last election.

Women's rights activists say that they are under-represented, even though the country has a woman prime minister and a woman opposition leader.

They were campaigning for 64 new seats, one for each district of the country.

They insisted that to be truly representative, women MPs should be directly elected.

The BBC's Roland Buerk in Dhaka says that despite the controversy, ministers say the bill - which would make these proposals a law - is due to be put before parliament later this month.

Currently there are only a handful of women MPs in Bangladesh, a country of 130 million people.