Decade after recognition, economic inclusion remains out of reach for Hijra community

In 2013, Bangladesh officially recognised the Hijra community as a third gender. Photo: Rajib Dhar

Babuni was in class three when her classmates started bullying her. They avoided her company, called her "half ladies", bullied her in the corridors, and occasionally hit her. When she brought the complaints to her teacher, the response was one of blame rather than concern.

The bullying did not stop with Babuni. It spilled over to her sister, who would come home in tears and Babuni could not endure that. So she stopped going, left school, and some years later, left home too.

Babuni is an activist now. She runs an organisation called Somvob Foundation, which works for marginalised people, and she owns a clothing store selling deshi attire and run by a team made entirely of Hijra community members. It is a functioning business, built from nothing. 

Her story is presented, sometimes, as evidence that the community can thrive given the chance. But the path she walked to get there is one no child should have to survive.

From sacred status to social stigma

The Hijra community is among the oldest transgender groups in the world. Long before the borders of South Asia were drawn and redrawn, before the partition, before the nations, they held a place of cultural and even sacred significance. 

Certain Hijra communities were considered members of a holy caste and at times their blessings were sought at births and weddings, their presence understood as spiritually meaningful. In the courts of the Mughal Empire, they occupied positions of real social consequence.

The British colonial administration changed that. It could not fit the Hijra community into the rigid gender binaries its moral framework required, and so it criminalised them. Their gatherings, their practices, their visibility in public life were policed and pushed to the margins. The stigma that was written into law two centuries ago still has not fully lifted. In Bangladesh, as in the rest of South Asia, it persists in how the community is named, treated, and ignored.

The word Hijra itself illustrates this. In common use, it has become an insult thrown at boys considered too feminine, at men who do not perform toughness convincingly enough, at anyone who does not fit. 

It functions as social control, used to shame and punish non-conformity. The distance between what the word means to those who carry it as their identity and what it has become in the street captures how thoroughly this marginalisation has settled into everyday life.

In 2013, Bangladesh officially recognised the Hijra community as a third gender. It was treated as a significant step, and in strictly legal terms it was one. But the recognition came without funding, without policy changes, and without any real mechanism to alter daily realities.

And crucially, it came with a label that the community itself largely rejects. 

In Bangla, Hijras are formally categorised as "jouno o lingo protibondhi", meaning a person with sexual and gender disabilities. This is not a neutral bureaucratic term. The community itself disputes this framing. 

They do not consider themselves disabled in any physical, mental or sexual sense, and the disability designation, by shaping how institutions, employers and the general public treat them, has done more to deepen stigma than address it. 

Even for those willing to register under the third gender category, the state was not ready. A decade after the recognition, government forms still lack a third gender option.

Hijra identity is not monolithic. The community includes intersex individuals, transgender women, and castrated men, among others, each with their own relationship to gender, identity, and self-description. The government, however, has pushed strongly for third gender registration, and in some cases compelled it.

The only home that accepts them

After leaving home, most Hijra individuals end up finding a guru.

The guru system is the informal social infrastructure that the state never provided. When someone leaves, or is pushed out of, their family, often as a teenager, they seek out the established Hijra community in their area. 

Each area has a guru, an experienced community leader who takes in new members, provides shelter, training in community customs and practices, and a structure for daily survival. In exchange, a portion of the earnings — from blessings at births and celebrations, from donations collected on the street — goes to the guru for their upkeep.

"We do not leave home purposefully; we usually have to," Babuni explained. "Afterwards, mostly because we do not get the chance to finish formal education, it becomes almost impossible for us to land a proper job. So for financial help, we seek the community who are like us and look out for the Hijra guru in that area, who usually takes charge of our living."

The system provides survival. It also creates dependency, and within it, there is hierarchy and, at times, exploitation. But Babuni is careful not to condemn it wholesale. "There are certain levels of discrimination and imbalance among the community," she acknowledged. "But at least here we can be ourselves."

It means that for many Hijra individuals, the community is the only space in Bangladeshi society where they are not required to either hide or perform their identity. That is what the guru system offers that nothing else does. It is not charity. It is the only home that does not demand a different version of you as the price of entry.

Collecting donations for a living is not something the community takes pride in. "We also do not like the process of asking money from people," Babuni said. "But show us other ways, or give us chances at least so that we can bear our own expenses. When civilians loot millions it does not bother much, but giving ten taka as a donation bothers everyone." So what would other ways look like, practically?

Recognition without opportunity

Bangladesh has made at least two formal attempts to create economic pathways. The government introduced a monthly allowance of Tk600 for the destitute aged 50 and above and education stipends for students from the Hijra community in the 2012-13 fiscal year. But even that comes with barriers. 

To access the benefit, applicants must undergo a medical test to "prove" their gender identity. And a large portion of the community never receives it at all — registration requires documentation that most Hijra individuals simply do not have, having left their families, and the bureaucratic process to obtain it is not designed with them in mind.

The second mechanism is a tax incentive introduced in the national budget for companies that recruit members of the third-gender (Hijra) community. To qualify, a company must employ at least 100 workers from the community, or ensure that third-gender individuals make up at least 10% of their total workforce. 

The rebate will amount to 75% of the total salary paid to workers from the third gender community or 5% of the payable tax, whichever is lower. This incentive could have been a meaningful instrument. But, in practice, its impact has been negligible.

Asked how many companies had claimed the benefit and what monitoring the National Board of Revenue (NBR) conducts to ensure compliance, NBR Chairman Abdur Rahman Khan did not respond to phone calls or WhatsApp messages. A tax department official at NBR, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "We have learned that two companies received this benefit. Whether anyone else managed to, we do not know."

"Bangladesh Bank has received no formal complaints of Hijra individuals being denied banking service," said Bangladesh Bank spokesperson Arif Hossain Khan. The logic sounds reasonable until you consider how social exclusion actually works. The barriers are less visible: the clerk who stares too long, the atmosphere that communicates that their presence is not expected.

Bangladesh Bank's position reflects a similar detachment. Spokesperson Arif Hossain Khan said no special banking policy is needed for Hijra or third gender individuals, because, unlike physically disabled people, they face no physical barrier to services. 

"Just as ramps or special ATM features are needed for the visually or physically impaired, for third gender people, it is possible to use banking facilities like any ordinary person simply by using the 'third gender' option on forms," he said.

However, he did acknowledge that the community's presence in mainstream business is low. "It's true that their presence in mainstream business and work is low. But Bangladesh Bank has received no formal complaints of Hijra individuals being denied banking services. If specific barriers are pointed out, the central bank will address them."

The logic sounds reasonable until you consider how social exclusion actually works. Nobody puts a sign on the door. The barriers are less visible: the clerk who stares too long, the atmosphere that communicates without words that their presence is not expected. Those experiences do not generate formal complaints. There are barriers that cause people not to walk through the door in the first place.

Building businesses against odds

Despite these invisible walls, some have fought their way into entrepreneurship. 

Priya Khan, for instance, transitioned from collecting donations in the Shahbagh area to running a bustling tea stall at Dhaka University's Teacher-Student Centre (TSC).

In Gopalganj, an entrepreneur named Palash runs a successful factory called Baby Handicrafts, which employs over 40 marginalised Hijra and transgender individuals and even exports products to Nepal. In Jamalpur, Joyeeta established Siri Handicrafts, employing more than 80 Hijra workers and eventually gaining a national platform through the SME Foundation to showcase her products.

Another striking example is Nayan, who faced severe societal prejudice but eventually established a thriving beauty parlour, now creating employment for other Hijra individuals.

Beyond these individual, self-driven triumphs, non-governmental organisations are actively stepping in to systematically build these economic pathways. Moshiur Rahman, Manager of Advocacy and Communication at Bandhu Social Welfare Society, explained how targeted support is fostering inclusion. 

"Bandhu provides services and support to Hijra communities across the country. We have provided seed grants to 20 Hijra community groups to promote entrepreneurship and economic empowerment. Through partnerships with various organisations, members of the Hijra community are now working in corporate sectors, media houses, banks, and other institutions. They are also receiving vocational skills training from UCEP Bangladesh to enhance their employment opportunities and professional development," Rahman said.

Yet, for every success story, countless other Hijra-led business initiatives quietly collapse. A recent study by researchers at Dhaka University's Institute of Education and Research highlighted that severe discrimination in educational institutions forces many Hijra individuals to drop out early. This lack of foundational education directly stifles their capacity to navigate complex business administration or formal supply chains later in life.

Furthermore, a policy report by the Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets explicitly details the financial asphyxiation these ventures face. Because Hijra individuals are often severed from their families at a young age, they lack inherited property deeds, collateral, or familial guarantors. 

This makes them entirely incompatible with the rigid documentation requirements of formal banking. Babuni captures this exact reality, "Mostly the initiatives fall because of the capital required, and banks do not provide loans as much to them as they do in the case of other clients," she explained.

When they do manage to open a shop, social taboo directly chokes their revenue. Research from the Manusher Jonno Foundation notes that Hijra entrepreneurs face extreme prejudice in the supply chain: wholesalers sometimes overcharge them or refuse to sell to them altogether, while mainstream consumers frequently avoid their stalls out of deeply ingrained stigma. Nayan herself recalled how, early in her business, customers would simply walk out upon seeing her.

Even in the rare cases where Hijra individuals enter formal employment, research consistently shows that the workplace becomes its own wall. Colleagues refuse to accept them. They are excluded from decisions. They are passed over for roles they are qualified for. The exclusion that began at home follows them into the office.

Bangladesh's garment sector employs around four million workers. International buyers condition their sourcing on social compliance. Factories are audited on labour rights and workplace standards. The industry has shown it can adapt when external pressure is backed by consequence.

The Hijra community is almost entirely absent from it. The tax incentive for inclusive hiring exists and has been claimed by two companies. No outreach accompanied it, no monitoring was set up, no one checked. The incentive was written into the budget and left there.

Path to inclusion

What needs to change is not complicated to state. A comprehensive policy brief by the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST) strongly recommends that the government move beyond mere nominal recognition and establish specialised, guarantor-free social inclusion schemes. 

Since the community fundamentally lacks family-backed collateral, economic researchers urge state-run banks and the SME Foundation to introduce dedicated revolving loan funds with alternative credit-scoring methods based on community trust rather than traditional deeds.

Additionally, to bypass the face-to-face discrimination that kills Hijra-led retail businesses, frameworks like the UNDP's "Anondomela" need to be scaled up at a national level, providing dedicated e-commerce linkages so these entrepreneurs can connect directly with buyers. 

Academic studies from Dhaka University also stress that economic empowerment is impossible without first making mainstream education safe, calling for strict anti-bullying enforcement rather than isolating Hijra students into separate institutions.