From streets to ballot: When women spoke

In July, women were impossible to ignore.

On campuses and streets in every corner of the country, women marched, chanted, treated the wounded, held banners, protested, and bled beside their fellow protesters. The July Uprising did not just topple a regime; it changed Bangladesh's political imagery. A whole generation saw women not as mere supporting characters, but as frontrunners.

And then, quietly, that scenery began to change. Those faces began to fade. Or did they?

The political platform that followed the uprising did what platforms often do in Bangladesh – it refocused on men, bringing back decade-old patriarchal gatekeepers.

Months later, an exhibition in Dhaka finally asked the question out loud: women were essential then, so why are they being erased now? A researcher involved with the exhibition – which showed women's active participation in the July Uprising through the eyes of 25 photographers – explored how women were "systematically erased" from the nation-building process after 5 August.

By the time the country prepared for the 13th parliamentary election under the interim government, the struggle had changed. It was no longer about changing a regime; it became about whether women could remain in decision-making positions, whether they could be political actors in the new government, whether they would remain visible, or whether they could be returned – politely or brutally – to the margins.

That is why women's voice in this election cannot be limited to speeches or Facebook posts.

They spoke rhetorically – through who contested, who won, who lost, who was targeted, and most importantly, who voted, aligning along an ideological fault line that ran straight through gender.

Not Symbolic – Structural

The 13th parliamentary election was widely regarded as one of the fairest in years, and it produced a clear result. BNP and its allies claimed victory with a large majority, while Jamaat-e-Islami and its allies also made historic gains. Voter turnout was reported at around 59.44%.

However, aside from this data, another number mattered – women's participation in this election.

According to Election Commission data, 83 female candidates contested in this national election, including 63 from political parties and 20 independents. The end result was even more alarming: only seven women won general seats.

Seven in a 300-seat election, alongside 50 reserved women's seats allocated later, is a signal. It shows how Bangladesh's political arena remains heavily patriarchal even after the July Uprising, where women's participation was monumental.

Even when they contested, misogynistic campaigns and discriminatory treatment during the election influenced outcomes, women candidates and activists argued. Overall, expectations that parties would nominate more women after the July movement were not met.

So when women spoke out in the national election, it was to say out loud that women were central to the national debate yet outliers in the formal offer of power.

The ideological choice

We must also remember that a huge part of the population of this country chose an Islamist party that became a major parliamentary force.

Before the election, women's rights activists warned that women's freedoms were in danger due to Jamaat's rise and its conservative stance. The party reinforced that concern when it did not nominate any female candidates.

This strategy sent a clear message. A party that fields no women is not simply struggling to find suitable candidates; it is choosing not to place women in decision-making power.

Even then, a large portion of the population voted for Jamaat. Whether voters supported Jamaat out of Islamist ideology, conservative social values, frustration with established parties, or a desire for moral order, the implication is clear – a conservative political force acquired democratic legitimacy.

In that moment, the country revealed a divide. Some voters — women and men – were prepared to vote for a party that does not prioritise women's empowerment. On the other hand, another group of voters emerged determined to reject that ideology, expressing it through votes, activism, and, in some constituencies, by electing women.

This was the election's uncomfortable truth – Bangladesh's gender landscape revealed a fault line.

Rumeen Farhana against the system

That fault line was felt more sharply in Rumeen Farhana's victory in Brahmanbaria-2. The facts, as reported by mainstream outlets, are clear. She was expelled from BNP, ran independently, and triumphed, defeating the BNP alliance-backed candidate in her constituency.

She received around 117,495 votes, with a margin of approximately 37,568 over her nearest rival.

Rumeen's win sends a clear message, challenging three patriarchal assumptions embedded in Bangladesh's political structure.

First, she challenged the assumption that a woman needs party protection to survive electorally, as she won her constituency without BNP's support.

Second, she defied the belief that a woman who breaks rank should be punished into irrelevance. Her expulsion from BNP did not weaken her; it strengthened her narrative.

Third, she challenged the belief that a woman cannot carry a constituency on her own – even when facing the "full force" of the very party she once represented.

Women politicians in Bangladesh are often allowed to be visible only within controlled boundaries – party structures, family networks, and patron-approved limits. Rumeen broke those boundaries. Her win challenges the belief that women's authority is borrowed rather than earned.

It is a message not only to women but also to those who believe disobedience is a political death sentence for female politicians – the constituency disagreed.

Manisha Chakraborty: Defeat was not the end

If Rumeen's story is about defiance, Dr Manisha Chakraborty's story is about refusing to disappear after defeat, as patriarchal politics often expects of women.

She contested in Barishal-5 and lost even when she was a leftist. Then she did something unexpected: she decided to continue working for the people in her constituency.

"We're not migratory birds," she said, emphasising that the work to change society would continue even after the election had passed.

That line should not be dismissed as sentiment. It is political.

Bangladesh can be harsh towards women in politics. Women are attacked through morality narratives, family pressure, digital harassment, judged for their "character," and often told they are "out of line." The system tries not only to defeat them at the ballot but also to make them quit.

Manisha's refusal to quit is resistance to that system.

Her message – that she would remain with the people even after the election – also challenges a broader electoral culture. Politics, she implied, is not seasonal.

For a woman candidate to say this after losing, and to refuse to exit a male-dominated political arena, sends a clear message:

Women are here to stay – not just for a cameo.

Six women, one signal

Alongside Rumeen, six women won seats as BNP nominees:

Afroza Khanam Rita (Manikganj-3), Esrat Sultana Elen Bhutto (Jhalokati-2), Tahsina Rushdir Luna (Sylhet-2), Shama Obaed Islam Rinku (Faridpur-2), Nayab Yusuf Ahmed (Faridpur-3), and Farzana Sharmin Putul (Natore-1).

Each of these victories was local. Together, they formed a counterweight to the ideological current of the election.

In a race where one major Islamist force fielded no women candidates and conservative rhetoric intensified, six constituencies chose women as lawmakers. That matters not because it fixes the representation gap — it does not – but because it shows voters were willing, in specific contexts, to entrust formal authority to women despite broader cultural resistance.

Women comprised only about 4% of all contestants. Most ran without the entrenched financial networks or grassroots machinery long cultivated by male politicians. Several were highly educated professionals who had to fight not only their opponents but assumptions about their legitimacy. Some ran with party backing; others defied internal hierarchies to stay in the contest.

Their wins did not overturn the system. But they complicated it.

They suggested that while patriarchal narratives remain influential, they are not uncontested at the ballot box.

Calculated, not sentimental

The major force in this election was women voters who assessed everything before them and chose a party they believed could represent them.

They approached the election with heightened awareness of risk – safety at polling centres, safe travel, dignity, and respect in society.

The controversy over a post from Jamaat chief Shafiqur Rahman's X handle  – which he alleged was hacked – equating women's work with moral decline did more than trigger protests. It crystallised a larger ideological question: whether women's economic and political independence would be treated as dignity or deviation.

The street response – from women's rights activists to working women staging broom marches – was not symbolic outrage. It was boundary-setting. It publicly marked certain rhetoric as unacceptable in a post-uprising Bangladesh. 

When Jamaat fielded no female candidates, that boundary moved from the streets to the ballot. Voters were no longer choosing only between parties; they were choosing between competing visions of who belongs in public authority.

Jamaat's eventual gains show that a substantial electorate accepted – or at least did not reject – its conservative framing. Its repeated rhetoric against extortion may also have resonated with a segment of voters. But the final result shows that many voters – including women – considered misogynistic rhetoric when deciding whom to support.

For some, stability or party loyalty mattered more than gender concerns. For others, voting was a way to reject ideas that question women's right to work, lead, and live freely.

That is how women spoke in this election – by making their choices count.

Khaleda Zia: endurance as language

Power in Bangladesh has often been negotiated through survival – and Khaleda Zia understood that. Through arrest, imprisonment and prolonged confinement, she stayed in the country and held her party together, turning endurance itself into political language. Even in the months before her death in December 2025, her refusal to retreat reinforced a simple message: women do not vanish under pressure; they persist.

Zaima and Zubaida: presence as statement

In a country where women are often expected to recede from political power once the cameras move elsewhere, Zaima Rahman and Dr Zubaida Rahman chose the opposite. As Tarique Rahman stepped into the centre of state power, both were consistently present at key meetings and public appearances, standing beside him in the visible architecture of leadership. Their choice not to remain private was not ceremonial; it was symbolic. In a political culture negotiating women's place in authority, presence itself became language – a reminder that women are not confined to campaign seasons or supportive shadows, but belong within the public frame of governance.

Women's reckoning

If July was about visibility, February was about legitimacy.

Women are no longer only asking to be included in the story. They are shaping outcomes that force the story to change.

Yet the numbers warn. Seven women in general seats is still a ceiling, not a breakthrough. There were moments of courage and success, but there was also strong resistance to women having equal space in politics.

Bangladesh did not hold an election where women won power easily.

It held one where women had to fight for the right to remain political – after they had already fought for the country's right to change.

And that, perhaps, is the sharpest line women wrote into the 13th election:

Women are no longer waiting for permission. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.