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HERSTORY Who gets to author Bangladesh’s transition?
— New Age/ Sony Ramani by Tina Nandi TODAY, as Bangladesh joins the world in observing International Women’s Day, this Women’s Day arrives in the shadow of July 2024 — a political rupture whose meaning, authorship, and outcomes are still being negotiated. Political transitions are often commemorated as moments of progress, yet they also expose how fragile and contingent women’s gains remain. In Bangladesh, women’s revolutionary labour has repeatedly been made hyper-visible
10 min read
WOMEN’S DAY AT REFUGEE CAMPS Cost of waiting
— New Age photo by Hasina Rahman MARCH 8 is International Women’s Day. And as I sat with that this morning — as a woman, as a humanitarian — I found I couldn’t separate my own reflection from the faces of the women and girls I see every day in the camps of Cox’s Bazar. Perhaps that is exactly as it should be. Because what does this day mean when you’re inside a shelter that was never meant to be permanent? What does it mean when you are eight years into displacement, nine
3 min read
Balancing the scales of safety and power
by Anita Jahid ON A busy working day, a woman stands at a crowded bus stop and shifts her scarf slightly, careful to conceal the faint bruise on her arm, the mark she received at home the night before. As she boards the bus, she clutches her bag tighter when the vehicle lurches forward. She is not only trying to keep her balance; she is calculating risk: where to stand, how to avoid unwanted contact, and whether she should get off early. The calculation does not end when she
5 min read
BETWEEN FEAR OF ISLAMISM AND FEMINIST AMNESIA Why BNP is not our feminist alternative
by Nafisa Nipun Tanjeem I KEEP thinking about the conversations with my progressive and feminist friends and allies right before the 2026 election results in Bangladesh. Many were holding their breath because of the prospect of a Jamaat-e-Islami-led government. The Jamaat-e-Islami ameer Shafiqur Rahman’s pre-election remarks about restricting women to work for five hours instead of eight hours and his beliefs against women’s political leadership raised significant feminist an
7 min read
GENDER AND POWER AFTER THE UPRISING The fear of the ‘bitch’
by Rozyna Begum THROUGHOUT the July uprising and the authoritarian Awami League regime, women acted not as mere representatives but as agents of rupture; yet political parties and the practices of statecraft denied them substantive presence in the new parliament. Women’s active participation in the resistance was central — they organised, documented, and sustained political life, transforming risk into collective action under an authoritarian regime. These were not symbolic a
6 min read
POWER AND POLITICS OF VISIBILITY When transition becomes a gendered battlefield
by Lubna Ferdowsi POLITICAL transitions are often framed as moments of democratic possibility, new rules, new actors, new beginnings. In Bangladesh, as in many post-authoritarian or transitional contexts, the language of reform, neutrality, and renewal has dominated public discourse. Yet beneath this rhetoric lies a familiar contradiction: women are highly visible in political conversations but largely excluded from political power. Gender equality becomes something to be spo
7 min read
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