Misogyny as Political Strategy: The Growing Violence Against Women in Bangladesh

Marshia Akbar ।। Bangladesh is often celebrated as a development success story for women. The ready-made garments sector employs roughly four million workers — the majority of them women — and has been central to export growth for three decades. Female enrollment in secondary education has reached parity with, or even exceeded, that of boys in many districts. Women are visible in universities, NGOs, the civil service, media, and political leadership. On the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, Bangladesh has frequently ranked ahead of several South Asian neighbors in educational attainment and political representation.

Yet these gains coexist with persistent and deeply troubling forms of violence and hostility. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics’ Violence Against Women Survey (2015), more than half of ever-married women report experiencing some form of intimate partner violence in their lifetime. Reports of sexual harassment and assault continue to surface regularly in national media. Online abuse targeting women journalists, activists, and professionals has also intensified, reflecting a broader global pattern of gendered digital harassment.

More recently, public rhetoric from Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh labeling working women in degrading terms and proposing restrictions on their working hours, dress, and mobility illustrates how quickly women’s economic participation can be reframed as moral disorder.

From Inclusion to Backlash

Bangladeshi women today occupy classrooms, factory floors, offices, and digital platforms in unprecedented numbers. Their labour has been central to export growth. Their educational advancement has reshaped family aspirations. Their political participation has altered the symbolic image of national leadership.

However, visibility does not guarantee security. Recent public rhetoric — including statements labeling working women in degrading terms and proposing restrictions on women’s working hours, dress, and mobility — demonstrates how swiftly women’s public presence can be reframed as a threat to moral order. Calls to impose dress codes, limit employment, or require male guardianship are not merely cultural expressions; they are regulatory ambitions aimed at curbing women’s autonomy.

Such proposals reveal a deeper struggle over who controls public space. Women’s participation in economic life has shifted gender hierarchies within households and labour markets. But when economic transformation is not accompanied by institutional protections and shifts in social norms, inclusion remains fragile. Symbolic representation can coexist with everyday insecurity.

Sociological research describes patriarchal backlash as a reaction that emerges when gains in women’s autonomy are perceived to threaten established hierarchies. Bangladesh’s rapid economic transformation — urbanization, global labour integration, and digital connectivity — has unsettled traditional gender expectations. Young women delay marriage, migrate for work, and navigate cities independently.

In such contexts, anxieties around morality, authority, and identity intensify. Backlash is rarely framed as opposition to equality. Instead, it is presented as a defense of religion, culture, or national values. Women’s bodies become symbolic battlegrounds upon which broader political struggles are fought.

When debates about unemployment, inflation, governance failures, or educational decline are redirected toward women’s clothing and mobility, structural causes of instability fade from view. Regulation of women becomes a substitute for substantive policy reform.

Economic Precarity and Crisis Masculinity

Bangladesh faces youth unemployment and underemployment, particularly among educated young people. Inflationary pressures and increasing competition in urban labour markets have intensified economic uncertainty in recent years.

This environment can fuel what scholars call crisis masculinity — a perceived erosion of male authority triggered by economic instability. In such moments, women’s participation in wage labour may be interpreted not as collective household resilience, but as displacement.

Political rhetoric that targets working women offers a simplified explanation for complex economic challenges. Structural problems — industrial upgrading, skills mismatch, technological change, and limited research investment — are reframed as moral problems. Economic frustration is redirected toward women’s visibility and independence.

The consequence is a dangerous personalization of structural distress.

Digital Amplification and Normalized Hostility

Social media intensifies these dynamics. Global evidence shows that online platforms amplify outrage-driven content and enable gendered harassment at scale. Bangladesh is not immune to these patterns. Dehumanizing language can circulate widely before institutions respond.

Language matters. When working women are publicly labeled in degrading terms, hostility becomes normalized. The boundary between rhetoric and intimidation narrows. The issue is not only isolated incidents of violence; it is the gradual expansion of what becomes socially permissible to say — and therefore to do.

Normalization is political. When degrading language is tolerated or strategically deployed, it signals that women’s rights are conditional rather than constitutional.

A Question of National Direction

The contradiction becomes sharper when placed against the memory of the Bangladesh Liberation War. In 1971, women were organizers, freedom fighters, and survivors whose dignity became central to the moral foundation of the new nation. The aspiration was not the seclusion of women, but the assertion of collective dignity and autonomy.

To advocate today for restricting women’s movement or economic participation narrows that founding vision. It redefines citizenship in gendered terms and implies that autonomy can be withdrawn when politically expedient.

Misogyny in Bangladesh cannot be dismissed as isolated prejudice. It intersects with economic stress, identity politics, and institutional fragility. When women’s autonomy is portrayed as a threat to social order, it becomes a powerful mobilizing tool. Moral panic consolidates constituencies. Cultural anxiety distracts from governance challenges.

Yet the long-term costs are measurable. Cross-national research consistently shows that higher female labour force participation is associated with stronger economic growth and productivity. Economies that discourage half their population from full participation undermine innovation and competitiveness. Public cultures that normalize gendered hostility weaken democratic resilience.

For a country aspiring to middle-income stability and global competitiveness, this is not a marginal issue. It is central to economic sustainability, social cohesion, and democratic maturity. The debate about women’s autonomy is, ultimately, a debate about Bangladesh’s future development trajectory.

The question, therefore, is not only about women’s rights. It is about the direction of the nation. Will Bangladesh confront structural challenges — employment generation, education reform, research investment, institutional accountability — through evidence-based policy? Or will it retreat into regulating women’s visibility as a substitute for systemic solutions?

Misogyny may be politically expedient in the short term. But it is socially corrosive and economically self-defeating. A nation born through a struggle for dignity must decide whether that dignity is universal — or selective.

Marshia Akbar: Researcher at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada