In Bangladesh today, many women are finding themselves caught in a tightening vice as hopes for gender equality buckle under new political winds. Since the regime change of August 2024 — when a student-led uprising toppled a 15-year rule and ushered in an interim government — the foundations of women’s economic freedom and social mobility seem increasingly fragile, threatened by Islamist hardliners whose agenda may reshape the everyday lives of millions of Bangladeshi women.
Under the former decade and a half of government led by Sheikh Hasina, women earned what many activists describe as “unprecedented gains.” Female participation in industry — from agriculture to the ready-made garment (RMG) sector, small business, informal labour, and government offices — expanded rapidly. On the factory floor, in rural farms and urban shops alike, women’s labour became part of the nation’s engine, and for many, their major source of income and dignity.
But the political upheaval and arrival in power of the interim administration under Muhammad Yunus has emboldened hardline voices. The country’s largest Islamist party — Jamaat-e-Islami — has launched a public campaign advocating that women stay home, reducing their working hours to five per day if their party returns to power. The message — thinly masked as respect for “traditional family values” (poribarik mullo) — reveals a deeply patriarchal blueprint for society: one that prizes a woman’s “place” inside the home above her role in public life.
That campaign is not merely rhetorical. Rights-watchers and civil-society groups warn that women’s hard-won gains — economic independence, workforce participation, social mobility — are under existential threat. The idea that the state will “respect” women only if they retreat into domestic roles reflects a worldview where female work is seen as a burden, not a right; useful only if hidden from sight.
Part of the danger stems from the broader political environment: the interim government, since its takeover, has pursued an aggressive crackdown under an amended anti-terror law, arresting activists, journalists, and peaceful dissenters — often on flimsy or politically motivated charges. For many women — especially those who might speak out, organise for rights, or simply demand fair working conditions — this erosion of civic space heightens vulnerability.
Beyond elite politics, the consequences ripple at the grassroots. A wave of communal and mob violence has targeted religious minorities and indigenous communities in 2025, with women particularly exposed to harassment, assault, or the simple pressure to hide visible signs of identity, such as bangles or bindis. Some minority women reportedly stopped wearing traditional adornments to avoid being singled out — a grim testament to growing fear in everyday life.
Culturally, these developments strike at the heart of Bangladesh’s complex identity: a society where many women have long balanced tradition — with its emphasis on “griho-bandhu” (homemaking, household duties) and family obligations — with the push for modernity, self-reliance, and public engagement. In Bengali parlance, women who juggle household chores, raise children, and also earn for the family have been called “megher kachhe akash” — “the sky above the cloud” — signifying resilience, stability, and hope. But if the trend toward enforcing a narrow, home-confined role gains ground, that sky may darken.
It must be remembered that women’s labour — in shops, farms, factories, homes — feeds not only families but the nation’s economy. Estimates suggest that women’s combined formal and informal work contributes a substantial share to national GDP; underestimating or suppressing their role inevitably dents both social justice and economic growth.
For many women in Bangladesh, the present moment is a reckoning. Do they accept a return to “traditional values” that confine them to domestic spaces, or do they resist — demanding the right to work, fair wage, voice, and dignity? For now, as Islamist rhetoric rises and state repression deepens, the risks are real, the pressure heavy, and the choices stark.
As Bangladesh heads toward elections in 2026, the decisions made by politicians, party bosses, and society will shape the future of half the country’s population. Will women be reduced to silent shadows in their own homes — or reclaim their rightful place across workplaces, public life, and the nation’s future?
Bangladeshi sisters, come closer — Auntie has brewed a strong cup of courage for you today. What’s happening around you is not just “politics.” It’s a storm creeping into your kitchens, your classrooms, your buses, your factory lines, your WhatsApp groups, your futures. When men with long beards and short imaginations start telling you your proper place is inside the home, it’s never just a suggestion. It’s a blueprint for shrinking your world. And I know you can feel the walls tightening — one new slogan, one new restriction, one new threat at a time.
But you, the women of Bangladesh, have never been fragile flowers needing protection. You are the backbone of jati (the nation). The pulse of the garment sector. The keepers of language, family, revolution. Your mothers stood up in 1971. Your grandmothers marched in the streets for workers’ rights. Many of you have been holding households and whole industries on your shoulders while the politicians squabble and the clerics moral-police from their podiums.
Now they want to reduce your workday, your salary, your voice, your mobility — as if your freedom is an inconvenience to their fantasies of a perfect “moral society.” Sisters, please. If morality is so precious to them, why do they start by policing you, the ones who’ve done the most honest labour in this land?
I may be sitting in another corner of Asia, but Auntie’s heart is marching beside you. All the progressive, feminist Asians — from Manila to Mumbai — are watching and whispering their support like a wind from the east. We’ve seen this story before: the moment women rise and gain independent income, control, dignity, someone panics. Someone tries to stuff you back inside the four walls of griho (home). They dress it up as tradition, purity, family values. But the translation is always the same: “We fear women who stand tall.”
Well then, stand taller.
Roll up those sleeves again. Organise in workplaces, in unions, in neighbourhoods. Use your phones, your voices, your courage. Protect each other in the streets, in the protests, in the polling booth when the day comes. The world may try to dim Bangladeshi women, but you are lanterns — you glow even in storms.
Auntie is with you. Asia’s feminists are with you. And the future — the one your daughters deserve — is waiting for you to claim it again.