PONE-D-23-03956Assessing a multilevel model of women discrimination in Bangladesh: Evidence based on multiple indicator cluster surveyPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Haq,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

Following changes are recommenced from reviewers that need to be incorporated:

Reviewer 01:

General comment : The authors are justified to use the approach of statistical analysis opted in this paper, however, the paper is not coherent. There are lots of gaps and standalone statements through out the paper which makes it difficult to appreciate the merits of the paper. There paper requires a professional English editor to correct grammar, accuracy and completeness of some of the statements

Title:

The title of the manuscript is not aligned to the objective of the manuscript. Technically, it is expected that the authors will assess multiple models and eventually report the parsimonious multilevel model, however, this study, sought to investigate the individual and community level factors associated with discrimination among women aged 15-49 years in Bangladesh. Therefore, the author should improve the title accordingly.

Abstract

1.Under Results, change “In the bivariate setup, all the selected covariates except women's education, the ethnicity of the household head, child death, and child sex were found to be significant for discrimination (p <0.05).change statement to read, In the bivariate models, the ethnicity of the household head, child death, and child sex were significantly associated with discrimination.

2. Since the findings included individual and community level factors, they should be reported as such. i.e At the individual level higher odds of discrimination were observed among women from poor (AOR:1.21,95%CI: 1.12-1.32) and middle income households (AOR:1.12 ,95%CI:1.02-1.22) compared to those from richest households etc.

3. The findings should be reported along with their reference group so that it easy for the reader to get complete meaning of the findings on the abstract alone.

4. I suggest the author delete the sentence “Model IV in the multilevel logistic regression model was the best model based on the principles of AIC, BIC, and deviance” instead start the sentence as, Based on the final model (Model1v), at the individual level higher odds of discrimination were observed among women from poor (AOR:1.21,95%CI: 1.12-1.32) and middle income households (AOR:1.12 ,95%CI:1.02-1.22) compared to those from rich households etc

5. Under results there is a statement that reads” Women from the other seven

divisions faced more discrimination than women from the Sylhet division” The actual categories of the variable should be stated along with their results and reference category so that the results are meaningful

Conclusion: The conclusion of the abstract doesn't add much value for this study. “According to the findings of this study, policymakers should focus on individual

and community-level factors that reduce women's discrimination in Bangladesh”. The conclusion should first establish the findings that were found to be significant before the recommendation. Similarly the recommendation is not correct, the research design is cross sectional hence the factors cannot reduce discrimination.

Introduction

1. Even though, I appreciate the background provided by the researcher however in some parts of the writing the author is simply listing statements that are not synthesized carefully to ensure the coherence with the title and the concepts of discrimination. For example, the author was tempted to discuss some of the indicators of discrimination in length such as discrimination on sex, employment, and culture while some were not discussed. It is important that the author first define or discuss what entails discrimination as defined in a standard policy document to focus the study. This will guide the researcher on how to keep the rational of the study coherent with the title and objectives as well as the methodology.

2. A majority of the studies cited are outdated, doesn't provide the prevailing picture of the problem at a global level or local level.

3. Please avoid using statement such as” There is none study conducted in Bangladesh on women discrimination and most of the study applied binary logistic regression “. Instead, I suggest you use, there are limited studies..

3. The rational for the use of a multilevel model as opposed to single level is not clear i.e “That is why we applied a multilevel model to identify both individual and community-level factors that influence women discrimination in Bangladesh. We build this research by examining several socioeconomic, socio-demographic and socio-cultural factors focusing on the general issue of individual perception of women discrimination. We investigate many individual differences that can differential predict reported gender discrimination in women in the present study, as it has been observed that both self-protective and situational factors affect how prejudicial occurrences are interpreted, with a corresponding appropriate methodology”.

Materials and Methods

1. Under the outcome variable subsection, authors should reference Bangladesh MICS to validate the measurement of the outcome variable.

2. Under the covariate subsection it an academic principle to either have a conceptual framework that depict the factors that are possibly associated with the outcome (discrimination) or cite studies that used similar factors to predict discrimination. However, in this study it is difficult to assess if some of the variables used can be used to understand discrimination.

3. Please provide additional information if the author calculated the household wealth index or was already calculated in the dataset. Either way, details on how it was calculated should be provided.

4. Under statistical analysis the authors make no mention of descriptive statistics, yet it is expected the prevalence of discrimination will be reported as well as the sample distribution. Please improve the section accordingly.

5. Even though the structure of the dataset is accurately described by the authors , most of the justification remain an opinion, no literature is cited to rationalize the use of the multilevel model i.e paragraph one under statistical analysis states “

It should be emphasized that a two-stage stratified sampling approach was used to get the data for this investigation. As a result, there is a hierarchy of levels at which reliance between observations occurs. The data set has a community-level influence. Instead of using a single-level modelling strategy, one could think of using multilevel modeling to examine this kind of data”.

6. Under Statistical analysis only Bivariate and multivariate analyses techniques are cited as approaches for the analysis in this study. However, there are results on sample distribution (see table 1) which are are not accommodated by the two analysis approaches. Please improve accordingly.

Results

1. Table 1: It may be good to list the variables according to the classification i.e list individual variables first and then community level.

2. The author may consider making the table in excel for good presentation.

3. You may consider having sub sections under the results

4. Just before the results of table 2, there should be a sub section: the relationship between discrimination and individual and community variables

5. There are missing results of the overall prevalence of discrimination that must be presented along with confidence intervals

6. The results in table 2 on the association between selected covariates and discrimination against women in Bangladesh are interpreted incorrectly. The results are row percent yet they are interpreted as column percent which is not correct.

7. The Wealth index is a proxy of the standard of living for households not the women, that is why household amenities are used to derive the household wealth index. Therefore improve the statement/interpretation of the results for the multilevel model, (table 3). Please add “The household wealth index showed a significant relationship with discrimination. The results demonstrated that women from less wealth households were more likely to face discrimination than women from rich households. For example, poor women from poor households were 21% (OR = 1.21, 95% CI: 1.12-1.32) more likely discriminated than women from rich households”.

8. Generally some interpretation requires editing for grammar to ensure they make sense to the reader. The entire section need to be improved. Some of the glaring interpretations:

• The odds of discrimination were 94% higher (OR=1.94, 95%, CI: 1.69-2.22) in women who has no child than in woman with 3+ child.

• Women not exposed to information and communication network were 27% more (OR = 1.27, 95% CI=1.07-1.51) discriminated than those were exposed.

• Women currently married were 49% less (OR = 0:51, 95% CI: 0.44-0.59), and women formerly married were 23% less (OR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.65-0.92) faced discrimination than the reference category women never married.

• The rate of discrimination was significantly 13% (OR = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.04-1.23) more for 20-34 years old women compare to those were 35-49 years old. This is not a rate instead ratios. So technically the interpretation is not correct

• According to model IV in Table 3, happy women were 59% (OR = 0.41, 95% CI: 0.36-0.46) less likely to face discrimination than those who were unhappy.

• Women who did not read magazines were 17% less likely to be discriminated (OR = 0.83, 95% CI 0.74-0.92) less likely to be discriminated than those who did not read magazines.

9. Instead of using OR for model 3 for the fixed effects, use AOR

10. Please provide the PVC-proportion change in variance for each model.

11. Please format table 3.

Discussion

1. The Discussion section need major attention. The author was just listing the factors that were found to be associated with discrimination without a detailed synthesis of the findings. Moreover, The discussion chapter mostly identifies how findings are supported or support previous studies. I suggest the author also include studies that deviate from the extant literature.

2. I suggest you delete the first paragraph under Discussion “This study collects the necessary information from the secondary data set named 2019 multiple indicator cluster (MICS) in Bangladesh. The multilevel logistic regression model is used in this study. Although there are some earlier researches in the literature that deal with a mainly comparable issue and identify gender discrimination in Bangladesh, the number of studies on women discrimination in Bangladesh is quite low. The current analysis is to uncover potential factors associated with women discrimination based on multilevel logistic analysis.

3. Please improve this sentence “It is observed from the previous study that poor women faced most discrimination compared to wealthy women mostly in every country in the world [18, 22]”

4. The strengths and limitations paragraph need further improvement. The author mentions that the study has several limitations but only mentions one when there are several limitation inherent in this study. Also the strengths of this study are not coming out clearly . For example if there are limited studies that applied multilevel modelling in Bangladesh, how is that a strength?

Conclusion

1. The entire section on conclusion must be reworked. There are lots of hanging statements and repetitions of justifications that have been emphasized in other sections. The conclusion must help the reader understand why your research should matter to them after they have finished reading the paper.

References

1. The referencing format is not presented in an intellectual manner.

Reviewer 02

The manuscript is a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusion. As A reviewer, I suggest author to addd more detailed description in this piece of research as statiscal analysis might not be understood by variety of readers. There are also some sweeping generalized statements which could be modified through standard acadamic English or some more reference should be added to the paragraph of refrence 10-12. Overall quality of the writing needs to be improved.

==============================

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Academic Editor

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Additional Editor Comments:

Following changes are recommenced from reviewers that need to be incorporated:

Reviewer 01:

General comment : The authors are justified to use the approach of statistical analysis opted in this paper, however, the paper is not coherent. There are lots of gaps and standalone statements through out the paper which makes it difficult to appreciate the merits of the paper. There paper requires a professional English editor to correct grammar, accuracy and completeness of some of the statements

Title:

The title of the manuscript is not aligned to the objective of the manuscript. Technically, it is expected that the authors will assess multiple models and eventually report the parsimonious multilevel model, however, this study, sought to investigate the individual and community level factors associated with discrimination among women aged 15-49 years in Bangladesh. Therefore, the author should improve the title accordingly.

Abstract

1.Under Results, change “In the bivariate setup, all the selected covariates except women's education, the ethnicity of the household head, child death, and child sex were found to be significant for discrimination (p <0.05).change statement to read, In the bivariate models, the ethnicity of the household head, child death, and child sex were significantly associated with discrimination.

2. Since the findings included individual and community level factors, they should be reported as such. i.e At the individual level higher odds of discrimination were observed among women from poor (AOR:1.21,95%CI: 1.12-1.32) and middle income households (AOR:1.12 ,95%CI:1.02-1.22) compared to those from richest households etc.

3. The findings should be reported along with their reference group so that it easy for the reader to get complete meaning of the findings on the abstract alone.

4. I suggest the author delete the sentence “Model IV in the multilevel logistic regression model was the best model based on the principles of AIC, BIC, and deviance” instead start the sentence as, Based on the final model (Model1v), at the individual level higher odds of discrimination were observed among women from poor (AOR:1.21,95%CI: 1.12-1.32) and middle income households (AOR:1.12 ,95%CI:1.02-1.22) compared to those from rich households etc

5. Under results there is a statement that reads” Women from the other seven

divisions faced more discrimination than women from the Sylhet division” The actual categories of the variable should be stated along with their results and reference category so that the results are meaningful

Conclusion: The conclusion of the abstract doesn't add much value for this study. “According to the findings of this study, policymakers should focus on individual

and community-level factors that reduce women's discrimination in Bangladesh”. The conclusion should first establish the findings that were found to be significant before the recommendation. Similarly the recommendation is not correct, the research design is cross sectional hence the factors cannot reduce discrimination.

Introduction

1. Even though, I appreciate the background provided by the researcher however in some parts of the writing the author is simply listing statements that are not synthesized carefully to ensure the coherence with the title and the concepts of discrimination. For example, the author was tempted to discuss some of the indicators of discrimination in length such as discrimination on sex, employment, and culture while some were not discussed. It is important that the author first define or discuss what entails discrimination as defined in a standard policy document to focus the study. This will guide the researcher on how to keep the rational of the study coherent with the title and objectives as well as the methodology.

2. A majority of the studies cited are outdated, doesn't provide the prevailing picture of the problem at a global level or local level.

3. Please avoid using statement such as” There is none study conducted in Bangladesh on women discrimination and most of the study applied binary logistic regression “. Instead, I suggest you use, there are limited studies..

3. The rational for the use of a multilevel model as opposed to single level is not clear i.e “That is why we applied a multilevel model to identify both individual and community-level factors that influence women discrimination in Bangladesh. We build this research by examining several socioeconomic, socio-demographic and socio-cultural factors focusing on the general issue of individual perception of women discrimination. We investigate many individual differences that can differential predict reported gender discrimination in women in the present study, as it has been observed that both self-protective and situational factors affect how prejudicial occurrences are interpreted, with a corresponding appropriate methodology”.

Materials and Methods

1. Under the outcome variable subsection, authors should reference Bangladesh MICS to validate the measurement of the outcome variable.

2. Under the covariate subsection it an academic principle to either have a conceptual framework that depict the factors that are possibly associated with the outcome (discrimination) or cite studies that used similar factors to predict discrimination. However, in this study it is difficult to assess if some of the variables used can be used to understand discrimination.

3. Please provide additional information if the author calculated the household wealth index or was already calculated in the dataset. Either way, details on how it was calculated should be provided.

4. Under statistical analysis the authors make no mention of descriptive statistics, yet it is expected the prevalence of discrimination will be reported as well as the sample distribution. Please improve the section accordingly.

5. Even though the structure of the dataset is accurately described by the authors , most of the justification remain an opinion, no literature is cited to rationalize the use of the multilevel model i.e paragraph one under statistical analysis states “

It should be emphasized that a two-stage stratified sampling approach was used to get the data for this investigation. As a result, there is a hierarchy of levels at which reliance between observations occurs. The data set has a community-level influence. Instead of using a single-level modelling strategy, one could think of using multilevel modeling to examine this kind of data”.

6. Under Statistical analysis only Bivariate and multivariate analyses techniques are cited as approaches for the analysis in this study. However, there are results on sample distribution (see table 1) which are are not accommodated by the two analysis approaches. Please improve accordingly.

Results

1. Table 1: It may be good to list the variables according to the classification i.e list individual variables first and then community level.

2. The author may consider making the table in excel for good presentation.

3. You may consider having sub sections under the results

4. Just before the results of table 2, there should be a sub section: the relationship between discrimination and individual and community variables

5. There are missing results of the overall prevalence of discrimination that must be presented along with confidence intervals

6. The results in table 2 on the association between selected covariates and discrimination against women in Bangladesh are interpreted incorrectly. The results are row percent yet they are interpreted as column percent which is not correct.

7. The Wealth index is a proxy of the standard of living for households not the women, that is why household amenities are used to derive the household wealth index. Therefore improve the statement/interpretation of the results for the multilevel model, (table 3). Please add “The household wealth index showed a significant relationship with discrimination. The results demonstrated that women from less wealth households were more likely to face discrimination than women from rich households. For example, poor women from poor households were 21% (OR = 1.21, 95% CI: 1.12-1.32) more likely discriminated than women from rich households”.

8. Generally some interpretation requires editing for grammar to ensure they make sense to the reader. The entire section need to be improved. Some of the glaring interpretations:

• The odds of discrimination were 94% higher (OR=1.94, 95%, CI: 1.69-2.22) in women who has no child than in woman with 3+ child.

• Women not exposed to information and communication network were 27% more (OR = 1.27, 95% CI=1.07-1.51) discriminated than those were exposed.

• Women currently married were 49% less (OR = 0:51, 95% CI: 0.44-0.59), and women formerly married were 23% less (OR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.65-0.92) faced discrimination than the reference category women never married.

• The rate of discrimination was significantly 13% (OR = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.04-1.23) more for 20-34 years old women compare to those were 35-49 years old. This is not a rate instead ratios. So technically the interpretation is not correct

• According to model IV in Table 3, happy women were 59% (OR = 0.41, 95% CI: 0.36-0.46) less likely to face discrimination than those who were unhappy.

• Women who did not read magazines were 17% less likely to be discriminated (OR = 0.83, 95% CI 0.74-0.92) less likely to be discriminated than those who did not read magazines.

9. Instead of using OR for model 3 for the fixed effects, use AOR

10. Please provide the PVC-proportion change in variance for each model.

11. Please format table 3.

Discussion

1. The Discussion section need major attention. The author was just listing the factors that were found to be associated with discrimination without a detailed synthesis of the findings. Moreover, The discussion chapter mostly identifies how findings are supported or support previous studies. I suggest the author also include studies that deviate from the extant literature.

2. I suggest you delete the first paragraph under Discussion “This study collects the necessary information from the secondary data set named 2019 multiple indicator cluster (MICS) in Bangladesh. The multilevel logistic regression model is used in this study. Although there are some earlier researches in the literature that deal with a mainly comparable issue and identify gender discrimination in Bangladesh, the number of studies on women discrimination in Bangladesh is quite low. The current analysis is to uncover potential factors associated with women discrimination based on multilevel logistic analysis.

3. Please improve this sentence “It is observed from the previous study that poor women faced most discrimination compared to wealthy women mostly in every country in the world [18, 22]”

4. The strengths and limitations paragraph need further improvement. The author mentions that the study has several limitations but only mentions one when there are several limitation inherent in this study. Also the strengths of this study are not coming out clearly . For example if there are limited studies that applied multilevel modelling in Bangladesh, how is that a strength?

Conclusion

1. The entire section on conclusion must be reworked. There are lots of hanging statements and repetitions of justifications that have been emphasized in other sections. The conclusion must help the reader understand why your research should matter to them after they have finished reading the paper.

References

1. The referencing format is not presented in an intellectual manner.

Reviewer 02

The manuscript is a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusion. As A reviewer, I suggest author to addd more detailed description in this piece of research as statiscal analysis might not be understood by variety of readers. There are also some sweeping generalized statements which could be modified through standard acadamic English or some more reference should be added to the paragraph of refrence 10-12. Overall quality of the writing needs to be improved.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

********** 

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

********** 

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

********** 

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

********** 

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Assessing a multilevel model of women discrimination in Bangladesh: Evidence based

on multiple indicator cluster survey

Article No: PONE-D-23-03956

Corresponding Aurthor : qramul Haq

General comment : The authors are justified to use the approach of statistical analysis opted in this paper, however, the paper is not coherent. There are lots of gaps and standalone statements through out the paper which makes it difficult to appreciate the merits of the paper. There paper requires a professional English editor to correct grammar, accuracy and completeness of some of the statements

Title:

The title of the manuscript is not aligned to the objective of the manuscript. Technically, it is expected that the authors will assess multiple models and eventually report the parsimonious multilevel model, however, this study, sought to investigate the individual and community level factors associated with discrimination among women aged 15-49 years in Bangladesh. Therefore, the author should improve the title accordingly.

Abstract

1.Under Results, change “In the bivariate setup, all the selected covariates except women's education, the ethnicity of the household head, child death, and child sex were found to be significant for discrimination (p <0.05).change statement to read, In the bivariate models, the ethnicity of the household head, child death, and child sex were significantly associated with discrimination.

2. Since the findings included individual and community level factors, they should be reported as such. i.e At the individual level higher odds of discrimination were observed among women from poor (AOR:1.21,95%CI: 1.12-1.32) and middle income households (AOR:1.12 ,95%CI:1.02-1.22) compared to those from richest households etc.

3. The findings should be reported along with their reference group so that it easy for the reader to get complete meaning of the findings on the abstract alone.

4. I suggest the author delete the sentence “Model IV in the multilevel logistic regression model was the best model based on the principles of AIC, BIC, and deviance” instead start the sentence as, Based on the final model (Model1v), at the individual level higher odds of discrimination were observed among women from poor (AOR:1.21,95%CI: 1.12-1.32) and middle income households (AOR:1.12 ,95%CI:1.02-1.22) compared to those from rich households etc

5. Under results there is a statement that reads” Women from the other seven

divisions faced more discrimination than women from the Sylhet division” The actual categories of the variable should be stated along with their results and reference category so that the results are meaningful

Conclusion: The conclusion of the abstract doesn't add much value for this study. “According to the findings of this study, policymakers should focus on individual

and community-level factors that reduce women's discrimination in Bangladesh”. The conclusion should first establish the findings that were found to be significant before the recommendation. Similarly the recommendation is not correct, the research design is cross sectional hence the factors cannot reduce discrimination.

Introduction

1. Even though, I appreciate the background provided by the researcher however in some parts of the writing the author is simply listing statements that are not synthesized carefully to ensure the coherence with the title and the concepts of discrimination. For example, the author was tempted to discuss some of the indicators of discrimination in length such as discrimination on sex, employment, and culture while some were not discussed. It is important that the author first define or discuss what entails discrimination as defined in a standard policy document to focus the study. This will guide the researcher on how to keep the rational of the study coherent with the title and objectives as well as the methodology.

2. A majority of the studies cited are outdated, doesn't provide the prevailing picture of the problem at a global level or local level.

3. Please avoid using statement such as” There is none study conducted in Bangladesh on women discrimination and most of the study applied binary logistic regression “. Instead, I suggest you use, there are limited studies..

3. The rational for the use of a multilevel model as opposed to single level is not clear i.e “That is why we applied a multilevel model to identify both individual and community-level factors that influence women discrimination in Bangladesh. We build this research by examining several socioeconomic, socio-demographic and socio-cultural factors focusing on the general issue of individual perception of women discrimination. We investigate many individual differences that can differential predict reported gender discrimination in women in the present study, as it has been observed that both self-protective and situational factors affect how prejudicial occurrences are interpreted, with a corresponding appropriate methodology”.

Materials and Methods

1. Under the outcome variable subsection, authors should reference Bangladesh MICS to validate the measurement of the outcome variable.

2. Under the covariate subsection it an academic principle to either have a conceptual framework that depict the factors that are possibly associated with the outcome (discrimination) or cite studies that used similar factors to predict discrimination. However, in this study it is difficult to assess if some of the variables used can be used to understand discrimination.

3. Please provide additional information if the author calculated the household wealth index or was already calculated in the dataset. Either way, details on how it was calculated should be provided.

4. Under statistical analysis the authors make no mention of descriptive statistics, yet it is expected the prevalence of discrimination will be reported as well as the sample distribution. Please improve the section accordingly.

5. Even though the structure of the dataset is accurately described by the authors , most of the justification remain an opinion, no literature is cited to rationalize the use of the multilevel model i.e paragraph one under statistical analysis states “

It should be emphasized that a two-stage stratified sampling approach was used to get the data for this investigation. As a result, there is a hierarchy of levels at which reliance between observations occurs. The data set has a community-level influence. Instead of using a single-level modelling strategy, one could think of using multilevel modeling to examine this kind of data”.

6. Under Statistical analysis only Bivariate and multivariate analyses techniques are cited as approaches for the analysis in this study. However, there are results on sample distribution (see table 1) which are are not accommodated by the two analysis approaches. Please improve accordingly.

Results

1. Table 1: It may be good to list the variables according to the classification i.e list individual variables first and then community level.

2. The author may consider making the table in excel for good presentation.

3. You may consider having sub sections under the results

4. Just before the results of table 2, there should be a sub section: the relationship between discrimination and individual and community variables

5. There are missing results of the overall prevalence of discrimination that must be presented along with confidence intervals

6. The results in table 2 on the association between selected covariates and discrimination against women in Bangladesh are interpreted incorrectly. The results are row percent yet they are interpreted as column percent which is not correct.

7. The Wealth index is a proxy of the standard of living for households not the women, that is why household amenities are used to derive the household wealth index. Therefore improve the statement/interpretation of the results for the multilevel model, (table 3). Please add “The household wealth index showed a significant relationship with discrimination. The results demonstrated that women from less wealth households were more likely to face discrimination than women from rich households. For example, poor women from poor households were 21% (OR = 1.21, 95% CI: 1.12-1.32) more likely discriminated than women from rich households”.

8. Generally some interpretation requires editing for grammar to ensure they make sense to the reader. The entire section need to be improved. Some of the glaring interpretations:

• The odds of discrimination were 94% higher (OR=1.94, 95%, CI: 1.69-2.22) in women who has no child than in woman with 3+ child.

• Women not exposed to information and communication network were 27% more (OR = 1.27, 95% CI=1.07-1.51) discriminated than those were exposed.

• Women currently married were 49% less (OR = 0:51, 95% CI: 0.44-0.59), and women formerly married were 23% less (OR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.65-0.92) faced discrimination than the reference category women never married.

• The rate of discrimination was significantly 13% (OR = 1.13, 95% CI: 1.04-1.23) more for 20-34 years old women compare to those were 35-49 years old. This is not a rate instead ratios. So technically the interpretation is not correct

• According to model IV in Table 3, happy women were 59% (OR = 0.41, 95% CI: 0.36-0.46) less likely to face discrimination than those who were unhappy.

• Women who did not read magazines were 17% less likely to be discriminated (OR = 0.83, 95% CI 0.74-0.92) less likely to be discriminated than those who did not read magazines.

9. Instead of using OR for model 3 for the fixed effects, use AOR

10. Please provide the PVC-proportion change in variance for each model.

11. Please format table 3.

Discussion

1. The Discussion section need major attention. The author was just listing the factors that were found to be associated with discrimination without a detailed synthesis of the findings. Moreover, The discussion chapter mostly identifies how findings are supported or support previous studies. I suggest the author also include studies that deviate from the extant literature.

2. I suggest you delete the first paragraph under Discussion “This study collects the necessary information from the secondary data set named 2019 multiple indicator cluster (MICS) in Bangladesh. The multilevel logistic regression model is used in this study. Although there are some earlier researches in the literature that deal with a mainly comparable issue and identify gender discrimination in Bangladesh, the number of studies on women discrimination in Bangladesh is quite low. The current analysis is to uncover potential factors associated with women discrimination based on multilevel logistic analysis.

3. Please improve this sentence “It is observed from the previous study that poor women faced most discrimination compared to wealthy women mostly in every country in the world [18, 22]”

4. The strengths and limitations paragraph need further improvement. The author mentions that the study has several limitations but only mentions one when there are several limitation inherent in this study. Also the strengths of this study are not coming out clearly . For example if there are limited studies that applied multilevel modelling in Bangladesh, how is that a strength?

Conclusion

1. The entire section on conclusion must be reworked. There are lots of hanging statements and repetitions of justifications that have been emphasized in other sections. The conclusion must help the reader understand why your research should matter to them after they have finished reading the paper.

References

1. The referencing format is not presented in an intellectual manner.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript is a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusion. As A reviewer, I suggest author to addd more detailed description in this piece of research as statiscal analysis might not be understood by variety of readers. There are also some sweeping generalized statements which could be modified through standard acadamic English or some more reference should be added to the paragraph of refrence 10-12. Overall quality of the writing needs to be improved.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr. Zubaida Zafar

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Individual and Community-level factors associated with discrimination among women aged 15-49 years in Bangladesh: Evidence based on multiple indicator cluster survey

PONE-D-23-03956R1

Dear Dr. Haq,

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