THE metaphor of the ‘engine seat’ in a local bus, once joked about by my late professor during my undergraduate years, remains the most stinging and accurate description of how women are integrated into the Bangladeshi political and social fabric. These seats, positioned directly above the vibrating, overheated engine, are technically ‘reserved’ for women. Yet they are designed for discomfort and marginalisation, serving as a constant reminder that the occupant is merely a guest in a vehicle driven by men.
As the country just observed International Women’s Day, the media, along with the corporate world, draped itself in purple and celebrated the ‘resilience’ of women with festive events and glowing profiles. Yet this yearly performance carefully avoids the rot beneath the surface. Bangladeshi women live in a constitutional democracy, yet the average woman is still treated as a ‘second-class citizen’, confined to a narrow moral and maternal framework that strips her of individual agency and secular rights.
The paradox of female leadership in Bangladesh is that while the faces at the very top have been women, the structures of power — both in mainstream and religious political parties—have remained deeply patriarchal. Women in the political domain are often treated as tokens or placeholders, particularly within the reserved-seat system in parliament, where they are expected to remain loyal to male party bosses rather than act as independent voices for their constituencies. This ‘engine seat’ politics ensures that while women are visible, they are never allowed to control the gears, and they are the first to feel the heat when the political engine begins to fail. During national election campaigns, we repeatedly observe how women candidates are targeted on social media.
The answer to why the engine-seat politics continue in a country with such a rich history of women’s leadership is complex. Still, it essentially stems from a calculated ‘religious backsliding’ that has seen even secular-leaning political parties court hardline religious elements to protect their hold on power. In Bangladesh, religion is not merely a matter of personal faith. It has been weaponised as a tool of social and political policing. Religious political parties and faith-based movements have long shaped public discourse, especially around gender roles.
Over the last decade, we have seen a silent but devastating trade-off that political parties offer ‘moral concessions’ to religious groups in exchange for electoral stability. This backsliding is most visible in the way policies regarding women’s legacy, workplace safety, and legal protections are often thinned or stalled to avoid the ‘wrath’ of the pulpit. When political parties align with these ideologies, they effectively promote a worldview that sees women as moral property rather than equal citizens or rights holders. This creates a society in which a woman’s value is measured by her ‘purity’ and her obedience to a narrow definition of practice, rather than by her capabilities. This enclosing has serious implications for social flexibility; a nation cannot be resilient when half its population is kept in a state of continuous ‘moral’ surveillance, where their every move is analysed for its alignment with a form of faith that serves radical ends rather than spiritual ones.
This religious and political association has found its most powerful and modern weapon in social media, where ‘slut-shaming’ and digital character assassination have become the standard response to women’s participation in public life. In the era of Facebook and TikTok, the ‘engine seat’ has been replaced by engines of digital humiliation. When a woman stands for election, leads a protest, or even simply expresses a view that challenges the patriarchal narrative, she is met with a coordinated assault from troll farms and religious influencers who use digital platforms to undo her dignity systematically. We often witness that the way female political participants are subjected to slut-shaming that uses snooty and gendered insults to imply that a vocal woman is ‘unrefined’, ‘shameless’, or ‘morally loose’. For example, during the student protests of the July movement and political rallies in the national election, female participants were targeted with doctored photos, deepfake videos, and hateful captions that questioned their ‘Islamic values’ or their upbringing. This is not accidental, but rather a strategic silencing mechanism. By making the cost of participation so high here, questioning a woman about her reputation, her family’s peace, and her social standing, these alliances successfully push women back into the ‘maternal box’, warranting that the public square remains a male-dominated territory.
Moreover, the rise of ‘digital wahhabism’ and the explosion of hate-speech vloggers/social media users have created an environment where ‘incel’ culture and religious extremism balance into a toxic cocktail. These influencers, often shaded by the silent protection of political factions, use their reach to shame women for their clothing, education, and independence more than freedom of expression. They border a woman’s autonomy as a ‘Western conspiracy’ or a ‘threat to the family entity’, providing the intellectual validation for the second-class status women tolerate. This digital shaming is the modern-day equivalent of the engine seat’s heat; it is planned to make the position of women so uncomfortable that they finally choose to eject. The impact of the digital harassment is visible in the self-censorship of young girls and women who, fearing the digital mob, are discouraged from entering political discussions or pursuing leadership roles. This is how resilience is worn: when a wall of digital abuse silences a society’s most creative and dynamic voices, the entire democratic structure begins to decline, leaving behind only the most rigid and backsliding elements of power.
This atmosphere of objectification and political silencing creates a direct channel to the awful levels of violence against vulnerable girls and children. In a society where women are treated as tokens in parliament and targets on social media, it is an expected consequence that the female body becomes noticed as a site of disposable power. The recent news headlines describing the rape and murder of children across Bangladesh are not isolated criminal acts; they are the logical endpoint of a culture that desensitises the female gender from the top down. When a girl child is killed, the crime is often diverted into victim-blaming or lost in the tangle of a legal system where ‘Boro Bhai’ (political big brother) connections guarantee freedom for the perpetrators. This culture of liberty is the eventual proof of second-class citizenship. If the state is unable to give protection to a seven-year-old girl, it is because the state does not truly value her as a human being with an inherent right to safety. Instead, her life is weighed against political alliances and social ‘order’.
To address the issue, we must think beyond the performative gestures of Women’s Day and demand a fundamental reform of our social and political treaty. First, we must dismantle the ‘engine seat’ by moving away from the reserved seat system and authorising political parties to field women directly elected by voters, ensuring that empowerment comes from a popular mandate rather than a party leader’s favour. Second, there must be a governmental and judicial firewall that stops political parties from trading women’s rights for religious associations. The state must stop using ‘moral policing’ as a political coinage. Third, there needs to be a strong and independent digital surveillance body that can hold social media platforms and ‘hate-speech influencers’ accountable for gender-based cyberbullying. Character assassination and ‘slum-shaming’ must be considered serious political offences which may cause the disqualification of candidates or lead to criminal trials. Finally, the ‘Boro Bhai’ culture of legal freedom must be erased by the establishment of independent, speedy trial courts for crimes against women and children, where the only thing that matters is the evidence, not the accuser’s political identity.
Social resilience is not built on infrastructure or GDP alone; it is grounded in collective norms that uphold the safety, agency, and dignity of all citizens. As long as Bangladesh treats its women as ornamental additions to a male-driven engine, its progress will remain shallow and prone to overheating. Bangladesh has a history and the capacity to be an example of gender equality in Asia. Still, it requires the courage to kick the religious and political opportunism that has held us back.
This year, let us promise to do the hard work of political and social reform. We must ensure that our daughters grow up in a country where they are not treated as second-class inhabitants of a digital slum but as the fair owners of their own destiny. It is high time to move women from the engine seat to the steering wheel, not for the sake of women but for the existence of the nation’s democratic soul. Only when a girl child can walk down any street in Bangladesh, digital or physical, without fear of being shamed, objectified, or harmed, will we be able to celebrate the resilience of our civilisation.
Shahenoor Akther Urmi is a freelance journalist and studies human rights and democratisation at Mahidol University.
