Women's advancement in Bangladesh vs. gender backlash

Women’s advancement in Bangladesh is clearly reflected in development indicators. Over the past three decades, women’s participation in education has increased significantly. Women’s labour in the garment industry has transformed the structure of the economy. Maternal mortality rates have declined. Women’s economic inclusion has expanded through microcredit and social protection programs. And women’s presence has become visible from local government bodies to the national parliament.

In gender indicators as well, particularly in education and health, Bangladesh is comparatively ahead within South Asia. However, behind these statistical successes, a complex reality is becoming increasingly apparent.

Alongside the expansion of women’s rights and visibility, a strong social, cultural, and political reaction has emerged, gradually taking the form of a structural backlash. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), nearly 76 per cent of women experience some form of violence during their lifetime, most of which goes unreported, indicating the social normalisation of abuse. The tendency to view violence as a “private” or “family” matter further reinforces this silence in many cases.

This has been compounded by a new dimension of digital violence, online threats, harassment, blackmail, and misuse of images, which particularly affects young women and professional women. As a result, even though women’s visibility and participation have increased, the corresponding social, cultural, and digital resistance is restricting their civic participation. Overall, this points to a structural reality of gender backlash.

Women’s empowerment is not a one-way process. Women’s entry into education, employment, and politics challenges existing balances of social power, giving rise to resistance and uncertainty. In Bangladesh, this backlash can be observed on three levels: at the social level, through the control of women’s mobility and behavior; at the cultural level, through the redefinition of women in terms of “honour,” “morality,” and religious identity; and at the political level, through attempts to limit or reinterpret women’s rights via policy and law. Together, these three dimensions create a structural gender backlash that affects women’s freedom and civic participation.

The roots of gender backlash in Bangladesh can be traced to the 1990s, when NGO-led development programs began expanding women’s economic participation. During this period, resistance, smear campaigns, and social pressure emerged in rural society, particularly in regions such as Brahmanbaria and Noakhali. Women working outside the home or participating in organized activities was often perceived as “deviating from the social order.” Although the backlash was then largely confined to the family and local community, it created a fundamental conflict surrounding women’s roles.

This social resistance took on a political form between 2011 and 2013. Debates surrounding the National Women Development Policy and the Hefazat-e-Islam movement in 2013 directly linked questions of women’s rights with state policy and political power. Issues of equality and rights were framed as being in conflict with religion, morality, and social stability. As a result, although women’s rights gained legal recognition, their social legitimacy increasingly came under question.

In Bangladesh, gender backlash is most clearly visible in relation to women’s presence in public spaces. Women’s presence on city streets, in universities, or at cultural events remains conditional, with their mobility subject to social surveillance, moral judgment, and at times violence. Several incidents over the past two years have made this reality even more apparent.

In 2025, an incident of harassment involving a female student in the Lalmatia area sparked widespread discussion on social media, raising questions about women’s safety and freedom of movement in public spaces. In the same year, allegations emerged at the University of Dhaka that an administrative employee had engaged in sexually harassing behavior toward a female student, generating significant concern among both the university administration and students. Such incidents cannot be viewed merely as isolated personal crimes; rather, they demonstrate how women’s presence remains neither fully safe nor normalised even within “modern” spaces, including institutions of higher education.

At the same time, while women’s visibility at festivals and public gatherings has increased, social reactions and online attacks concerning their clothing and behavior have also intensified. These responses are in fact part of a broader social structure that seeks to regulate women’s mobility and visibility. This reality demonstrates that public space is still not gender-neutral; rather, it remains a sphere in which women’s presence is constantly subjected to control. Consequently, violence and control are no longer confined to the private sphere; they are increasingly becoming normalised social processes within public spaces as well, forming part of a broader gender backlash.

Over the past decade, gender backlash in Bangladesh has taken on an even more complex form within digital spaces. According to a 2024 report by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), approximately 8.3 per cent of women experience online violence, including threats, blackmail, misuse of images, and harassment on social media. Similarly, UN Women reports that more than 60 per cent of women, particularly young women, journalists, and politically active women, face some form of online hate speech or harassment. (UN Women Asia Pacific, Digital Violence Reports 2023–24)

This trend points to a culture of organised, network-based harassment in which coordinated trolling, the spread of misinformation, image manipulation, and the leaking of personal information are used to suppress women’s freedom of expression. In Bangladesh, several online campaigns targeting female journalists and human rights activists have emerged in recent years.

Following investigative reports or public commentary, false information about their personal lives has been circulated, their images manipulated, and coordinated trolling campaigns launched in attempts to defame and discredit them. This issue has also been highlighted in various press freedom reports. (Reporters Without Borders, World Press Freedom Index: Bangladesh Country Notes, 2022–2024)

Similarly, among female university students, incidents of organized trolling, threats, and the leaking of personal information following expressions of opinion on social or political issues have increased. Various studies identify this as a form of “doxing-like harassment.” (Digital Rights Bangladesh, 2023; Access Now South Asia Report, 2024)

Politically active women are also facing coordinated smear campaigns, sexual harassment, and intimidation during elections and social movements, limiting their participation in public life. At the same time, incidents of image-based blackmail and the leaking of personal information have increased, particularly among young women. Another significant dimension of this digital abuse is the use of religious and moral narratives.

On online platforms, there is a growing tendency to portray women as a source of fitna (social disorder), instability, or moral decline. This socially legitimizes abuse and normalizes the control of women.

These examples make it clear that while digital spaces create opportunities, they also function as arenas for organized gender backlash.

In Bangladesh, the question of women’s rights has moved beyond social or religious debate and become part of political narratives and strategies, where women’s identities are reconstructed through binaries such as “culture versus rights” or “religion versus modernity.” In electoral politics, women are often portrayed as mothers, wives, or guardians of the family. As a result, their independent political and economic roles receive less importance. (Transparency International Bangladesh and CPD, Election Manifesto Analysis, 2018–2024)

This tendency was clearly visible in the 13-point demands of Hefazat-e-Islam in 2013, where women’s development and equal rights were presented as conflicting with religious values. Similarly, in electoral politics—particularly in the recent election manifesto of Jamaat-e-Islami—women are largely confined to family-centered roles, with their independent political and economic identities comparatively absent.

Likewise, UN Women (2022–2024) shows that within South Asian political discourse, women are frequently defined through “relational identity,” that is, as mothers, wives, or daughters. This weakens women as independent political agents. Consequently, although women’s political participation has increased, their presence in decision-making remains limited and, in many cases, symbolic.

One important effect of this process is that although women’s participation in Bangladesh’s labour force stands at around 36–38 percent (World Bank, 2023), their representation in politics and policymaking remains low. This disparity is not merely numerical but discursive, as women’s civic and political agency is restricted within relationship-based identities. In this way, gender backlash operates as an institutional political strategy that weakens women’s visibility and participation.

The women’s movement is attempting to confront this backlash. However, it faces structural limitations. In Bangladesh, the women’s movement often remains urban, middle-class, NGO-dependent, and project-based in structure. As a result, it has not been fully able to connect with the everyday realities of rural, low-income, and religiously sensitive women.

In this context, the movement frequently relies on policy-oriented and rights-based language, which creates only limited connections with local cultural experiences, religious values, and notions of family security. Consequently, an ongoing “communication gap” has emerged between the movement and public sentiment, further complicating the discourse around women’s rights.

Hesitation to construct a language of equality within religious narratives is also limiting progress on women’s rights. Research across South Asia shows that unless the language of equality and justice is rearticulated within religious interpretation, it becomes dominated by reactionary forces. In Bangladesh, powerful moral narratives concerning women’s “negative” roles are being built through religious sermons (waz mahfils) and online platforms, often exerting greater influence than the language of women’s rights. As a result, reactionary groups are using simpler, identity-based language, while the women’s movement remains comparatively confined to structural and institutional discourse.

Taken together, the women’s movement is now not only confronting structural inequality but also attempting to reconstruct its language, strategies, and cultural connections. Because this gap has persisted over time, the backlash is becoming more deeply rooted in society, and women’s rights are increasingly turning into the center of a broader cultural and political conflict.

Although women’s progress in Bangladesh is visible, a structural gender backlash has also emerged alongside it, one that calls women’s civic identity into question. Progress and backlash are not separate historical moments; rather, they are parallel realities within the same process, where increased visibility for women is accompanied by greater control and resistance. As a result, women’s rights are no longer merely indicators of development, but part of an ongoing political and social struggle.

In this context, the central question is whether women’s equal rights represent simply a marker of developmental progress, or whether they constitute an ongoing socio-political negotiation, one in which every advance also generates new forms of resistance. How this question is understood will shape the future path toward inclusive and sustainable gender justice.

* Farhana Hafiz is a gender analyst.
* The opinions expressed are the author’s own.

(This article appeared in Bangla in Prothom Alo and has been translated here into English)