Final month, as I walked from the stately places of work of the Worldwide Crimes Tribunal at Dhaka’s Outdated Excessive Court docket constructing to the Shilpakala Academy, I handed a raucous procession cheering a candidate for Jamaat-e-Islami, the nation’s largest Islamist get together. It was hanging: The get together, which opposed Bangladesh’s independence a long time in the past, hopes to make its strongest-ever exhibiting within the nation’s elections on Feb. 12.
The fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami has by no means received greater than a small share of the vote. Through the 1971 Conflict of Independence, a lot of its leaders collaborated with Pakistani forces, unleashing terror; on the time, they evaded a reckoning. Jamaat-e-Islami reached its electoral high-water mark—12 p.c of the vote—in 1991, however it was severely suppressed in the course of the 15-year rule of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which ended abruptly in 2024.
This time round, Jamaat-e-Islami might even see its reputation surge. Bangladesh’s oldest political get together, Hasina’s Awami League, is at present banned from political exercise, and it’s laborious to foretell how its votes will get distributed. Through the 2010s, Hasina’s authorities arrange worldwide crimes tribunals and prosecuted many Jamaat-e-Islami leaders; the trials had been extensively considered as flawed, maybe resulting in some sympathy for the get together. A number of of the convicted Jamaat-e-Islami leaders had been executed.
Now, the Islamist get together doesn’t have a transparent path to kind a authorities—but when it turns into a formidable power in parliament, it’s going to elevate profound questions in regards to the sort of nation Bangladesh needs to be: Muslim or Bengali.
With Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, it selected linguistic plurality and nationalism—together with non secular pluralism—over an solely Islamist identification with Urdu because the nationwide language. Bangladesh’s legal guidelines explicitly affirm equal remedy of faiths and equal rights for ladies. In a hanging historic anomaly for a conservative Muslim-majority nation, Bangladesh has been ruled by two ladies for 30 of its 54 years: Hasina and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Social gathering (BNP).
But, regardless of commitments that events adopted within the July Constitution final yr to area extra feminine candidates on this week’s election, the precise figures are shockingly low. Girls make up lower than 4 p.c of the candidates this yr, lacking the modest mark set out within the constitution; most main events failed to fulfill the goal.
That is paradoxical: Since its independence, Bangladesh has made extraordinary beneficial properties in feminine empowerment. Its feminine literacy charge is the best in South Asia after the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Its feminine labor power participation exceeds that of India or Pakistan. Bangladesh’s international reserves rely upon two essential inflows: remittances from migrant employees overseas and the labor of tens of millions of ladies employed in garment factories.
Girls had been additionally central to the student-led protest motion that ended Hasina’s rule—most of them with clear political ambitions. But, as Umama Fatema, a former spokesperson for the College students In opposition to Discrimination platform that led the rebellion, informed me, as soon as the motion’s political goal was achieved, these ladies felt deceived. She stepped down from her management place, citing disillusionment.
“Girls had been neglected from the primary day after the regime fell. We felt used. We felt we had been devices,” Fatema mentioned. “However we had been on the forefront.”
Girls who had been seen and vocal in the course of the rebellion have now been denied the chance to meaningfully contest the elections. The July Constitution, which was meant to sign a political reset, included an settlement for ladies to make up 5 p.c of candidate nominations, to rise ultimately to 33 p.c. However the provision was nonbinding; as many as 30 of the 51 political events in Bangladesh, together with Jamaat-e-Islami, did not area even one feminine candidate.
This failure has implications past gender fairness. If political events can’t uphold a modest and procedurally easy dedication, their willingness to implement the extra complicated reforms promised within the constitution—from electoral restructuring to institutional accountability—should be questioned.
Regardless of Hasina’s and Zia’s management, the monitor document for feminine candidates in Bangladesh is bleak. No ladies had been immediately elected within the nation’s first two parliamentary polls, and progress since has been uneven. Within the 2008 election, well known because the nation’s final free and truthful vote, 59 ladies ran and 19 received. In 2018, 68 ladies ran and 22 received, however the opposition boycotted the polls. In 2024, although 99 ladies ran, solely 20 had been elected—once more, most of them unopposed.
This yr’s figures are lamentably poor: Girls submitted simply 4 p.c of the nomination papers for candidacy, and after scrutiny, solely 63 remained amongst 1,842 candidates. Main events bear main duty. The BNP, which is prone to carry out properly, has nominated solely 10 ladies—virtually all associated to former male parliamentarians. The exclusion seems deliberate: Even throughout months of conferences main as much as the July Constitution, events not often despatched ladies representatives.
Smaller, left-leaning events have fielded extra ladies, however few are anticipated to win seats. Shahinur Akter Sumi, 27, who was a part of the rebellion and is contesting a constituency in Dhaka, informed me that she has a bonus in a conservative society: “I discover it simple to enter houses and communicate to ladies. My male rivals can’t.” However as a candidate of the Socialist Social gathering of Bangladesh (Marxist), she has an uphill wrestle.
One promising left-leaning candidate is Taslima Akhter, who is thought for her work on behalf of Bangladesh’s feminine garment employees and for her images. She speaks eloquently of structural inequalities within the nation; housing, grocery costs, and different on a regular basis considerations dominate her marketing campaign. Girls need equality, respect, and dignity, she mentioned in an interview. Of garment employees, Akhter informed me: “Their power is what provides us hope. They’re fighters who’ve constructed their lives.”
The irony is stark. Although Hasina and Zia dominated in their very own proper, they each rose by way of male political lineages. Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was Bangladesh’s first president; Zia’s husband, Ziaur Rahman, was among the many officers who commanded Bangladeshi forces within the Conflict of Independence. Each had been assassinated. Although Hasina and Zia proved expert politicians, their management didn’t dismantle structural boundaries for ladies. Zia permitted Islamic interpretation of gender roles, whereas Hasina weakened legal guidelines towards baby marriage, in a nod to fundamentalists.
This contradiction mirrors what economist Naila Kabeer calls the “Bangladesh paradox”: that regardless of the nation’s exceptional progress in feminine schooling, well being, and labor participation, formal political illustration stays stubbornly low. Kabeer attributes previous change partially to bottom-up company. Girls exploited cracks within the system—male migration, financial necessity—to push into new areas as well being employees, garment laborers, family-planning advocates, and decision-makers, which accrued right into a profound norm shift.
The state displays this progress: Girls now serve throughout the civil administration, which makes the distinction with electoral politics particularly evident. Jesmin Tuli, a former extra secretary of the Election Fee, informed the Each day Star that the candidate nomination course of stays “deeply male-dominated.” Girls lack entry to marketing campaign logistics, patronage networks, and the muscle nonetheless central to mobilization.
Non secular conservatism has intensified this exclusion. Jamaat-e-Islami has not too long ago gained disproportionate affect, buoyed by the Awami League ban. The Islamist get together has tried to placate middle-class voters and girls, saying that it could not roll again ladies’s rights. However its imaginative and prescient of society assigns ladies a secondary position, and its leaders have brazenly mentioned God didn’t intend ladies to control. (This has not traditionally stopped Jamaat-e-Islami from allying with the Awami League or the BNP after they had been led by ladies.)
Bangladeshi human rights lawyer Sara Hossain has mentioned that when ladies who’re a part of Jamaat-e-Islami say they’ve accepted male management as being extra vital than feminine management, it will be important for such statements to be challenged and rejected. In a latest occasion in Dhaka, she mentioned: “You don’t should see what Islamic regulation has to say about this—Bangladesh doesn’t observe Islamic regulation. The equality of ladies and men is within the nation’s structure, and it needs to be saved as such.”
The backlash to surging feminist actions in Bangladesh has been vicious. Teams equivalent to Hefazat-e-Islam, with their very own interpretations of Islam, have mobilized towards the suggestions of the Girls’s Affairs Reform Fee on property and inheritance rights. This seems to be not non secular piety however ethical panic—an nervousness about dropping patriarchal management. The fee didn’t suggest abolishing non secular regulation however has urged options. The fiercest outrage facilities on inheritance: If the traditionalists have their manner, male privilege will override equal rights.
The implications of ladies’s exclusion from land possession are extreme: vulnerability after divorce or widowhood, lack of entry to credit score or state subsidies, and entrenched dependency on male family members or charity. However Bangladesh’s financial system would collapse with out ladies’s labor. Along with dominating the principle export garment sector, ladies underpin agriculture and the casual financial system—but they continue to be hidden in coverage and statistics.
Lastly, it isn’t solely clerics who resist reform. Secular and progressive males additionally retreat when change threatens home hierarchies. They march for democracy however invoke supposed cultural authenticity arguments when confronted with calls for round marital rape, guardianship, or labor rights for intercourse employees.
For the reason that 2024 rebellion that introduced down Hasina, ladies have been pushed out of public decision-making in Bangladesh. Traditionally, ladies have been outstanding in demonstrations towards authorities in Bengal—from pushing again towards the British when Bangladesh was a part of India to rebuking Bangladeshi governments after they acted towards ladies’s rights. The protest motion briefly urged the potential for a brand new political settlement—one based mostly on fairness reasonably than management.
Now, many activists worry that the second is passing and the previous guard has returned in new kinds. Reform commissions, political roundtables, and nationwide debates are dominated by males. When males monopolize energy, it’s referred to as experience; when ladies demand inclusion, it’s branded divisive. Concentrating on ladies throughout moments of political disaster is an previous tactic. When political legitimacy erodes, energy turns inward—towards policing our bodies, selections, and rights. Girls change into symbols to be protected or punished.
Throughout a long time, a sample has emerged throughout South Asia, with just a few exceptions. Girls enter politics however not often on their very own phrases. In 1905, the yr Lord Curzon, the viceroy of British-ruled India, divided Bengal into Hindu and Muslim halves, a author from what was not but Bangladesh, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, wrote of a feminist utopia in her novel, Sultana’s Dream. It’s time for Bangladesh to reclaim and reassert these roots.
