If democratic reform is to be taken seriously, women’s political participation must be enforced rather than rhetorically endorsed, writes Amith Kumar Malaker
THE nomination lists for Bangladesh’s upcoming national election, scheduled for February 12, 2026, have punctured much of the optimism that followed the July uprising. Despite repeated commitments under the July National Charter to expand women’s political participation, women remain overwhelmingly absent from the electoral race. What was presented as a democratic reset now risks becoming a careful restoration of familiar exclusions.
Initial Election Commission data showed 109 women submitting nominations among 2,568 candidates — just 4.24 per cent. Of these, 72 were nominated by political parties, while the rest stood as independents. After scrutiny, the EC declared 1,842 candidates eligible across 300 constituencies: 1,777 men and only 65 women. Women’s share thus fell further, to 3.53 per cent. Thirty of the country’s 51 registered parties have not nominated a single woman, and no party has nominated more than ten. These figures fall well short of the Charter’s modest five per cent commitment. This is not an administrative failure; it is a political choice.
The July National Charter emerged from a mass uprising in which women were not peripheral supporters but central actors. They organised protests, protected students, coordinated logistics, confronted repression and exercised leadership on the streets. Their visibility and courage created a widespread expectation that post-uprising politics would finally open space for women in decision-making. That expectation has now been decisively disappointed.
Women were largely absent from the nine months of negotiations led by the Consensus Commission that shaped the Charter. Their presence in the advisory structures of the interim government was minimal. Now, as power is to be redistributed through elections, they are again missing. If political parties cannot uphold a numerically modest and procedurally simple commitment such as nominating five per cent women candidates, claims of democratic reform lose credibility. Women’s nominations have become the first concrete test of the July Charter’s seriousness, and the political class has largely failed it.
The behaviour of major parties is revealing. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, a signatory to the Charter and long led by a woman, has nominated nine women out of more than 300 candidates, roughly three per cent. Jamaat-e-Islami, which submitted nominations in over 270 constituencies, has not nominated a single woman. Many other parties, both religious and secular, have followed the same exclusionary pattern. Only a handful of smaller parties have demonstrated that alternatives are possible. The Bangladesh Socialist Party (Marxist), for example, has nominated women in roughly one-third of its constituencies.
The most common justification offered by parties is ‘electability’. Women, it is argued, cannot win. This claim collapses under scrutiny. Women are considered unelectable precisely because parties have refused to invest in their leadership development, grassroots organisation, campaign capacity and public visibility. Electability is not an inherent trait; it is produced through sustained political support.
Even where women are nominated, the pattern often reinforces inequality rather than challenging it. Many women candidates are drawn from political families and fielded as substitutes for male relatives disqualified by legal cases, imprisonment or death. Grassroots women leaders — trade union organisers, local government representatives and movement activists — remain largely excluded from nomination processes.
This reflects a political economy in which money, muscle power and patronage networks dominate candidate selection. Election campaigns in Bangladesh are prohibitively expensive, and access to campaign finance remains overwhelmingly male. Women, who historically have had limited control over property and personal wealth, enter this system at a structural disadvantage. Instead of compensating for this imbalance, parties routinely treat financial capacity as a prerequisite for nomination. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: men dominate because the system is designed around male privilege, and the system persists because those who benefit from it control candidate selection.
The contradiction is unmistakable. Women are mobilised during moments of resistance but marginalised during moments of decision-making. They are welcomed on the streets but excluded from the ballot. Since the uprising, women have faced intensified harassment in public spaces, escalating online abuse and a shrinking civic space. Those who attempt to remain politically active encounter resistance not only from conservative social forces but from within their own political organisations.
This is not simply a cultural problem; it is an institutional failure. Political parties function as gatekeepers of democracy, yet they continue to deny women access to power while publicly endorsing reform. Reserved seats for women, maintained for decades, have failed to disrupt this exclusion. Instead, they have normalised symbolic presence without meaningful authority. The July Charter offered a rare opportunity to move beyond this pattern by prioritising direct elections and enforceable commitments. That opportunity has largely been squandered.
Women constitute nearly half of Bangladesh’s population and, in many constituencies, a majority of voters. A political system that systematically excludes them from electoral competition cannot credibly claim democratic legitimacy. Reform cannot be selective. A democratic transition that sidelines women is not incomplete by accident; it is incomplete by design.
If democratic reform is to be taken seriously, women’s political participation must be enforced rather than rhetorically endorsed. The EC should publicly hold parties accountable for failing to meet the Charter’s five per cent nomination commitment and link future registration privileges and electoral benefits to compliance. Campaign finance reform is equally urgent. Targeted public funding and dedicated institutional support for women candidates must be integrated into national policy to offset structural financial exclusion. Political parties must end proxy nominations and prioritise grassroots women leaders over family-based substitutions. The long-standing requirement of 33 per cent women’s representation in party committees must finally be enforced. Reserved seats should transition towards direct elections and the state must act decisively against political violence and online harassment targeting women candidates.
Without these measures, women will continue to be mobilised during moments of resistance and excluded when power is distributed. The July uprising demonstrated that women are not marginal actors in Bangladesh’s political life. It is time for the political system to reflect that reality.
Amith Kumar Malaker is public policy analyst.
