Bangladesh women march to demand representation in polls

DHAKA: Bangladeshi women carried flaming torches through the streets of Dhaka on Monday, marching to demand justice and political representation in the coming elections.

Despite helping spearhead the 2024 uprising that paved the way for the vote on Thursday, women are poised to be largely excluded from the South Asian country’s political arena.

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Women candidates make up fewer than four percent of the election hopefuls, while 30 of the parties contesting this week’s race put forward male-only tickets.

“Whatever regime is in place, repression of women appears in many different forms,” said protester Priya Ahsan Chowdhury, 31, a Supreme Court lawyer, who joined around 100 women chanting slogans and singing in front of parliament.

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“In some places, we haven’t seen any representation of women at all - only men. That is what drove us to come out and speak up.”

The march, which began at midnight Sunday and ended in the early hours of Monday, came against a backdrop of rising incendiary rhetoric targeting women at religious and political rallies, and growing attempts to push them out of public life.

The February 12 vote will be the first election since the overthrow of the autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina.

“The aspiration of the mass uprising was to build a country based on justice and equality – but women are slowly being erased from the public sphere,” said protester Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, 38, head of the Tech Global Institute think tank.

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“And now, when we are once again dreaming of building a new country, political parties where women once played key roles have largely sidelined them in the electoral race.”

Bangladesh has long been led by powerful women, including Hasina and her longtime rival, the late three-time prime minister Khaleda Zia.

Bangladesh’s largest Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has not fielded any women candidates, while its members have suggested that society is not ready for women in politics.