As I write this, a year has passed since the Monsoon Revolution in Bangladesh, a mass uprising that radically shifted the political terrain of our country. It was a student-led movement that ultimately overthrew a fascist, authoritarian regime. This historic victory was made possible only because of the courageous participation and leadership of women. Today, however, many of those women find themselves pushed to the margins of the very revolution they helped build.
It was women who led the first march on July 14, after the then Prime Minister publicly labeled the protesters as “descendants of Rajakars (The people who betrayed our nation in the liberation war).” It was women who bore the first wave of repression, attacked at Jahangirnagar University and the University of Dhaka on July 14, 15 and 17. Following the brutal killing of Martyr Abu Sayeed, it was again women who held the frontlines, refusing to retreat until justice was served and the regime collapsed.
During those days of resistance, no one questioned how women were dressed or where they came from. I remember women from all segments of society standing shoulder to shoulder — students, teachers, artists, day labourers, lawyers, homemakers, religious women, atheists, cis women, and trans women — standing united in defiance. On July 16, I led a march from the women’s dormitories on my campus. A video from that day circulated widely, capturing a powerful moment where a student in jeans and another in hijab walked out together to join the protest. Women from across professions and classes marched and led the movement. Some of the women became martyrs, while others, who could not be physically present, cooked, delivered food, provided medical care, and offered shelter.
It was this collective and visible presence of women that helped protect the movement from being dismissed as radical, violent, or illegitimate. Yet, soon after the revolution’s immediate goals were met, those women began to disappear from the public narrative.
The fight for gender equity is not over. It is not just about seats at the table. It is about equal pay. It is about protection from mob violence. It is about justice for survivors of gender-based violence. It is about dismantling the structures that repeatedly ask women to sacrifice everything for the revolution, only to erase us once it is won. True liberation cannot come while half the population is still silenced, filtered, or feared. We know the road ahead is long and fraught with obstacles. But we also know that our resistance is not fleeting.
Their erasure was not accidental. Once the political transition took place, female leaders and frontline activists were sidelined. It took a little while for the national leadership to notice that women are left behind. People started making a fuss about it, and what happened then is sheer tokenism. Once the women’s question was brought to the table, patriarchy could only afford selective inclusion. National leadership, which had once embraced women’s presence when convenient, quickly replaced them with more “acceptable” female figures- those willing to mimic the language and behavior of the patriarchal establishment.
The process was not subtle. It was systematic and deliberate. The women who refused to conform, who retained their independent voices and radical imagination, were silenced and excluded. Women with their independent, fierce voices were slowly sidelined to make space for women who only speak the language of the so-called leaders, patriarchs in the field of national politics.
After the regime change, the threats against women began to intensify. Many of us were targeted with rape threats, death threats, and online smear campaigns. But perhaps the most damaging attack came in a quieter form- the politics of invisibility. Under the guise of unity and reform, filters were established to appease populist, right-wing interests. Women who did not dress “accordingly”, who expressed progressive or leftist views, or who refused to perform the gendered expectations of modesty, were vilified or sidelined.
In the months that followed, the backlash grew more violent. Sex workers, students, athletes, and public figures were harassed and assaulted by extremist mobs, often with impunity. Incidents occurred across Dhaka in Uttara, Jurain, Shahbagh, and Kamalapur. Many of these cases were either dismissed outright or left uninvestigated. Victims, particularly sex workers, were consistently denied assistance by law enforcement.
Disturbingly, many of the prominent figures from the July movement remained silent in the face of such violence. Their silence only broke when attacks began targeting women within their immediate circles. Numerous women have reported fearing public harassment over their clothing or lifestyle choices, such as being scolded for not wearing a veil or for smoking in public. These acts of policing were often carried out under the implicit protection of Islamist groups. What is most disheartening is that some of the very individuals we once considered comrades not only turned away, but in some cases, actively contributed to the backlash.
The women without whom the July uprising could not have succeeded — the ones who organized, led, fed, treated, and fought — have been cast out of the new political order. Anti-rape protestors have faced arrest, while perpetrators of sexual violence have been celebrated. In places like Chittagong and Munshiganj, men who harassed women in broad daylight were treated as heroes. Meanwhile, Indigenous activists, who had stood in solidarity throughout July, continue to face systemic violence, especially in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Over twenty Bawm women remain imprisoned with their young children under false charges. Three Bawm men have died in custody. Their stories have received little attention.
Feminist and postcolonial scholarship helps us understand these patterns. Leila Ahmed has documented how women’s visibility is often instrumentalized during national or anti-authoritarian movements, only to be constrained once the political goals are achieved. Cynthia Enloe reminds us that women are always present in times of crisis and conflict, but their labor is deliberately erased from post-conflict historiography. Saba Mahmood complicates our understanding of agency, reminding us that women’s resistance often emerges not through grand gestures, but through everyday refusals, even within oppressive systems.
To understand the political usefulness of invisibility, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of the “subaltern” is instructive. Spivak argues that systems of power construct conditions where marginalized voices, especially those of women from the global South, are spoken about, but never truly heard. Similarly, Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias have shown how nation-states often rely on women as symbols of cultural purity, while denying them real political agency.
This is the contradiction at the heart of today’s Bangladesh. During the uprising, women’s bodies were often instrumentalized as political tools, their presence used to signal inclusivity and legitimacy. But in the aftermath, only certain kinds of women are permitted visibility — those who do not directly challenge existing power structures. Women who speak too boldly, question too deeply, or refuse to conform are either sidelined or subjected to strategic labeling and marginalization. Their visibility is seen as a threat, not an asset.
The interim government of Bangladesh established several reformation commissions, one of which was the Women’s Affairs Reformation Commission. The members of this commission faced severe backlash- they were slut-shamed, subjected to character assassination, and publicly humiliated in broad daylight during a political party’s procession. Throughout this targeted harassment, the government remained entirely silent, offering neither condemnation nor protection.
More recently, a separate “consensus commission” has been formed to negotiate structural reforms with various parties. Yet, this body, composed entirely of elite men, conspicuously excludes women, Indigenous representatives, civil society members, and feminist activists. The irony is glaring. A male-dominated commission, devoid of meaningful participation from those most affected, is now tasked with determining how women’s seats will be allocated in parliament. It is not only undemocratic; it is a betrayal of the very principles the revolution claimed to uphold.
Despite all of this, the fierce women of Bangladesh remain undeterred. We are still here. We are still protesting. We are still dreaming. Ours is a legacy rooted in generations of resistance. From the anti-colonial struggles of 1947 to the Liberation War of 1971 and beyond, Bangladeshi women have consistently stood at the forefront of history. We walk in the footsteps of those who came before us, drawing strength from their courage and vision. We are their descendants, and we carry forward their unfinished struggle. We refuse to allow patriarchs — whether from past regimes or present formations — to determine our future.
The fight for gender equity is not over. It is not just about seats at the table. It is about equal pay. It is about protection from mob violence. It is about justice for survivors of gender-based violence. It is about dismantling the structures that repeatedly ask women to sacrifice everything for the revolution, only to erase us once it is won. True liberation cannot come while half the population is still silenced, filtered, or feared. We know the road ahead is long and fraught with obstacles. But we also know that our resistance is not fleeting.
As Angela Davis, a Marxist feminist scholar and activist, reminds us, “Freedom is a constant struggle.” Ours is a struggle not just against a government, but against the deeply embedded structures of patriarchy, authoritarianism, and elitism. The new Bangladesh we dream of is still ahead of us. But we will get there together. The women, the students, the workers, the farmers, the Indigenous people, the women in madrasas, temples, and pagodas- all will rise again. And one day, we ourselves will dismantle the stronghold of this patriarchal, authoritarian, indulgent, corrupt, nepotistic and exclusionary order. That is the dream we hold on to.
Image Credit: ManikDas1122, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
