New Delhi: Lamenting the minuscule representation by women candidates in Bangladesh’s upcoming elections, a Dhaka daily on Monday flagged “systemic design and failure” as the main reasons, echoing the voice of writer and activist Taslima Nasreen without naming her.
“The lack of women candidates has nothing to do with women’s competence or willingness to lead, but everything to do with systemic design and failure,” opined the article in the Daily Star.
“Many women in Bangladesh are writing, raising the issues that I’ve been reiterating. It is welcome that journalists and authors in Bangladesh are raising the issues that I’d been talking about all this time, though they still can’t mention or quote me,” Taslima Nasreen told IANS, sharing her thoughts.
The writer, a feminist, secular humanist, and activist, living in exile for over three decades – first in Sweden, then India – also reacted that her name does not feature anywhere in such pieces, though she is among the best-known advocates for gender equality. “I understand that they can’t name me,” stated the author, adding: “It’s not about whether I’m being quoted or not, referred to or staying unrecognised, but what I really wish is that there be gender equality, secularism, and peace in Bangladesh.”
Monday’s Daily Star article also reminded, “Bangladesh is not unfamiliar with the image of women in power. In fact, two women have governed this country for nearly the entirety of its democratic era. Their names are etched into national history and public memory alike. And yet, when the arena shifts from symbolism to competition, women almost disappear.”
This part of the report was referring to the last Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, now in exile after being toppled in a student uprising and facing a death sentence, and the recently deceased Khalida Zia. While the former led the Awami League, now facing a political ban, the latter was the chief of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
However, they both entered active politics under compulsion, following a dynastic tradition, where Hasina’s full-time participation was after the assassination of her father and the architect of Bangladesh’s liberation, Mujibur Rahman.
For Khalida, it was the assassination of her husband and BNP founder General Ziaur Rahman, who was also a leader in the liberation struggle.
“On paper, women are free to contest. In practice, nominations are shaped by patronage, money, informal loyalty networks, and a political culture in which intimidation and risk are not incidental, but embedded. These are not gender-neutral conditions; they privilege those already embedded in male-dominated circuits of influence and capital,” the newspaper article observed.
“When political competition is designed in ways that systematically disadvantage women, low representation is all but inevitable,” it added.
Meanwhile, Taslima argued that women in Bangladesh have long been treated as unequal, and emancipation may come with more voices seeking parity. “My books are still under a ban there; no publisher there can print my books, no reader there can buy them. A narrative has been built around my works as if these are very bad, very harmful,” she pointed out.
“I’m still undergoing the punishment that the Bangladesh regime had handed out to me for raising my voice,” she said, adding, “I continue to live in exile,” where she has a book titled Nirbashito, or banished.
(IANS)
