Normalised Invisibility – The Path Towards Exclusion

If you pass through certain parts of Bangladesh, especially in bazaars or marketplaces, some of us will instantly notice the lack of women. And that usually means no women shopkeepers, no women shoppers, and no women walking on the sidewalk or standing and waiting for a bus. I have often crossed districts and major business hubs outside of the metropolitan cities, watching and counting how many I can spot. But the true tragedy of this story is that if you ask most people in Bangladesh about this, especially men, they will tell you they have not noticed or considered this as something to take note of.

Suppose you have been following the discourse in Bangladesh over the last year and a half (Sabur, 2024), since the uprising in July 2024, leading to the fall of an authoritarian government that has been leading our country for the previous 16 years. The shift of the right-wing forces since is not new, nor is it sudden. In recent times, 2024 onwards, we have seen a strong anti-rights movement visibly pushing an agenda that mirrors the anti-trans movements we have been seeing in the West. Culminating women’s development, the feminist movement, linking them to the ‘LGBTQI+ agenda’, and using the rhetoric of it being against family values, ruining our traditions and cultures, and ‘anti-Islamic’. These right-wing initiatives showcased the research, resource mobilization, and narrative-building work they have carried out to be able to target specific organisations, activists, and core personnel, intending to question their motives, linking them to the previous government if needed, and aiming to delegitimize their standing as liberal political rights defenders.

The Women’s Affairs Reform Commission (Mustafa, 2024) was formed by the Interim Government in November 2024, after much discussion about the need to ensure women’s equal rights in the state reforms being planned since the July Uprising. The report was published in April 2025 (Hafiz et al., 2025), highlighting demands and proposing necessary reforms that should be included in the constitution and law, public administration, the political system, education, health, the economy, labor and employment sectors, social security, media, sports and culture, disaster management and climate change. The need for inclusive, non-discriminatory mechanisms and equitable measures was integrated into both legislative and executive systems. The response to the commission’s report was one of the biggest shows of right-wing forces across the country, suggesting that many of the recommendations were anti-religious (equal inheritance for women), challenging our cultures (right to be recognized as a sex worker), and anti-family (legal recognition of marital rape). Demonstrations were held against the feminist activist who was heading the commission, and protest rallies were held across the country, with a national-level gathering in Dhaka organized by Islamist coalition (The Daily Star, 2025). Interestingly, even though the commission had presented itself focusing specifically on cis-women’s demands, the anti-LGBTQI+ movement still linked the feminist agenda for equality to the promotion of inclusion of queer rights and agendas. As a result, the shift was seen where other reform commissions, the interim government, and even the liberal spaces distanced their engagement with the Women’s Reform Commission’s report and barely included the voices of women, Indigenous communities, minority groups, and queer communities in the July Charter, which was published in September 2025.

The process of compiling the reform agendas for the July Charter was done by consultation with political parties, which were overwhelmingly represented by Bengali Muslim Men. The shameless parading of these images showed the lack of women and minorities as clear as day. This had a very direct connection to the decisions made about the political participation of minority voices, especially a decision to only have 5% nomination of women candidates for the parliamentary election, when demands from the women’s movement clearly stated a minimum of 15% nominations. Yet, whenever these issues are brought up, the same rhetoric is heard—the capacity of women is still low, there is very little interest from women to engage in political spaces, it is difficult for women to engage in campaigning, and the lack of security and safety. But this concept about women is not limited to the right-wing and politicians. We have sat around tables discussing women’s visibility and participation, and the interesting fact is that whether we have development workers, academicians, social rights actors, cultural activists, or legal advocates, the opinions are the same. Men still largely view women in public, economic, political, and service roles as an add-on, not a basic right or earned position. The intention is to ensure women’s voices are not taken for granted, and we keep on hearing the same “excuses” of why it is difficult to “find the right” representation of women. As a result of this, in the upcoming election, we see a very slim representation of women and other minority identities as potential representatives in the parliament (The Daily Star, 2025).

With upcoming elections being planned for February 2026, political parties are now voicing their agenda in terms of ensuring women’s safety and security. Recently, Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the major Islamic parties, has announced that they recognize and respect the maternal and caregiver role of women, and thus, they want to encourage shortened working hours for women. This discourse on recognising care work has led to discussions about the gendered role of women, the process of removing them from the public space, and valuing their responsibilities in the privacy of their homes. When these same political actors are asked about why they have not nominated any women candidates from their party, they mentioned the current lack of security for women, and the need to establish better systems so women can feel secure and protected when they enter the political spaces (Barta24, 2025). These narratives are also showcasing the different ways the right-wing institutions are expanding their agenda, instead of pushing authoritative and religious rules. They are strengthening their alliances with minority communities, establishing a Hindu wing, and engaging indigenous and minority community candidates (still no women) to ensure inclusive representation. Their considerations about women’s right to work-life balance, protectionist vision of safety, and discourse on the gendered roles of carework are consistently feeding into the cultural and traditional systems that a mass population can easily align with. It also helps to feed into the narrative of the lonely young men who feel disempowered and left behind by women in many spaces.

Visibility is a key characteristic of what enables representation and access to “publicness”. When I count women in a marketplace, I am immediately able to assess the role of women in economic activities in that locality, their mobility and sense of agency, and most importantly, how men engage with women in that community. It also provides me with a sense of how I will be perceived within that public space. And that will affect how I carry myself, how I engage with the people, and how exactly I voice my needs. And often, when we are demanding the need for representation, not as a token, but noticeable numbers and diversity, the real demand is to ensure that the space will be safe and open to listen to my voice.

In a community, when it is still ONLY women who are really leading these conversations in most spaces, the silence of men is the real gap – eventually leading to exclusion, lack of dissent, and a step towards anti-democracy. It would be easy to target specific groups and religious institutions as being the ones responsible for pushing women out of public spaces. But the real challenge is to have men, especially Bengali Muslim Men, normalise the lack of women and diversity around them. If men are waiting for these voices to disappear and only then shift around in their seats, wondering why women are not saying anything, it will already be too late.

List of resources

Barta24 (2025) Jamaat-e-Islami on women’s working hours and political participation. Available at: https://barta24.com/english/details/politics-en/279208 (Accessed: 9 February 2026).

ConstitutionNet (2025) Bangladesh July National Charter 2025 (English translation). Available at: https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/Bangladesh%20July%20National%20Charter%202025%20%28English%20translation%29.pdf (Accessed: 9 February 2026).

Hafiz, F., Sultana, S., Parveen, S., Barua, J. and Alam, S.M. (2025) Women’s Reform Commission report and state accountability. Prothom Alo. Available at: https://en.prothomalo.com/opinion/p6k2bvutdm (Accessed: 9 February 2026).

Mustafa, K. (2024) Women’s Affairs Reform Commission: Recommendations, disputes and the way forward. The Daily Star. Available at: https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/views/news/womens-affairs-reform-commission-recommendations-disputes-and-the-way-forward-3892151 (Accessed: 9 February 2026).

Sabur, S. (2024) This is not my revolution: Aspiration, erasure, and the political field in the post-July uprising Bangladesh. Positions Politics. Available at: https://positionspolitics.org/seuty-sabur-this-is-not-my-revolution-aspiration-erasure-and-the-political-field-in-the-post-july-uprising-bangladesh/ (Accessed: 9 February 2026).

The Daily Star (2024) Disband women’s reform commission. Available at: https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/news/disband-womens-reform-commission-3885741 (Accessed: 9 February 2026).

The Daily Star (2025) No women get tickets in 30 parties’ nominations. Available at: https://www.thedailystar.net/news/bangladesh/elections/news/no-women-tickets-30-parties-4074281 (Accessed: 9 February 2026).