Bangladesh’s February 2026 election did more than rearranging parliamentary seats. It also reopened old questions about religion, gender, class, family power and the future direction of the country. After years of political obstruction, operating under pressure, and rebuilding itself through social and religious networks, Jamaat-e-Islami returned to national politics with unusual force. Its alliance secured a historically significant result, with reports placing Jamaat and its allies at around 77 seats and nearly one-third of the popular vote. This was not a small comeback. It was a political re-entry with national consequences.
Jamaat’s campaign did not present itself only through religion. It spoke the language of welfare, morality, anti-corruption, and discipline. It promised a state guided by ‘righteousness’, where governance would begin from the household and reach the cabinet. For many voters frustrated by corruption, political violence, and elite detachment, that message may have sounded clean, simple, and reassuring.
Before the election, Jamaat Ameer Dr Shafiqur Rahman’s remarks on reducing women’s working hours sparked public debate. The proposal was framed as protection: women would work fewer hours, and the state would compensate for the remaining time. But many working women immediately saw the danger. In a labour market where women already struggle to get and retain jobs, why would an employer hire a woman for five hours if a man can work eight? What appears protective in speech can become exclusionary in practice.
Another controversy followed around whether women can hold the highest political office under Jamaat’s religious interpretation. In a country that has been led by women for much of its modern political memory, the statement ignited sharp criticism. Women’s rights groups, activists and urban professional women raised concerns about what Jamaat’s rise might mean for women’s political freedom, workplace participation and leadership.
Yet the more difficult question is not only why many women opposed Jamaat. The more uncomfortable question is: why did some women appear to support it? This question must be handled carefully. There is currently no strong public exit-poll evidence showing exactly how women voted by party, class or geography. It would be irresponsible to claim, without data, that ‘rural women’ or ‘peri-urban women’ broadly supported Jamaat. But there are visible signs that Jamaat deliberately mobilised women. The party’s women’s wing announced a rally in Dhaka before the election, and Jamaat also sought security for its women activists during the campaign. In Sylhet, media reported women participating in a Jamaat election rally, with thousands of chairs arranged for female attendees.
Bangladesh is a patriarchal society, but patriarchy does not survive through men alone. It survives through family, marriage, inheritance, religion, respectability, silence and everyday discipline. It survives when daughters are told to adjust, when daughters-in-law are taught to tolerate, when girls are warned not to be ‘too modern’, and when women’s honour is treated as the moral property of the family. In many households, older women are not powerless. Mothers-in-law, grandmothers, aunts and elder female relatives often shape family decisions, influence men’s choices, regulate younger women’s mobility and determine what is acceptable for daughters and daughters-in-law. Sometimes this authority protects the family. Sometimes it harms younger women. Sometimes women become the very guards of the system that once controlled them.
This is not just anecdotal. Research on Bangladesh shows that patriarchal norms are often internalised by women themselves. A 2024 study using Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey data found that 19.47 percent of women justified wife-beating for at least one reason. That does not mean these women are cruel. It means they have been socialised into a moral order where violence, obedience and family discipline can be seen as normal.
The Bangladesh Violence Against Women Survey 2024 also reminds us that violence is not only a private issue between husband and wife. A wider family environment often sustains it. UNFPA’s summary of survey notes the persistence of intimate partner violence, technology-facilitated gender-based violence and a deep culture of silence around women’s experiences.
This is where Jamaat’s appeal among some women may lie – not in contradiction, but in familiarity.
For women whose social world is organised around family hierarchy, religious respectability and moral discipline, conservative politics may not appear oppressive. It may appear orderly. It may sound like safety, dignity, a return to values in a society they feel has become too unstable.
To a working woman in Dhaka, a five-hour workday policy may sound like a threat to her career. To another woman, especially one whose identity is built around domestic responsibility, it may sound like recognition of women’s ‘natural’ family role. To a young woman fighting for public voice, religiously framed restrictions may sound like control. To an older woman with authority inside the household, the same restrictions may sound like moral protection.
This is not a simple divide between ‘educated’ and ‘uneducated’, or ‘urban’ and ‘rural’. That would be too lazy. The real picture is intersectional. Age, class, marital status, education, religious training, income, exposure to NGOs, digital access, employment, migration experience and family position all shape how women understand politics.
Not every woman in Dhaka experience ‘women’s rights’ in the same way. For some, freedom means mobility, work and voice. For others, freedom may mean safety, respectability and protection from social judgement. Political parties know this. Jamaat’s language of morality and welfare speaks directly to those anxieties.
The paradox is that women remain structurally underrepresented in formal politics. In the 2026 parliamentary election, only 78 women contested, out of nearly 2,000 candidates. Reports showed that nearly one-third of these women had family links to influential men. So even when women appear in politics, they are often still filtered through male power, family networks and party patronage.
Jamaat may be the most visible site of debate now, but patriarchal politics is not limited to one party. Bangladesh’s mainstream political culture has long used women symbolically while keeping decision-making male dominated. Women are celebrated as voters, mothers, martyrs, beneficiaries, and loyal supporters. But they are rarely allowed to become equal architects of political power.
The point is not that women are responsible for patriarchy. The point is that patriarchy is powerful because it gives some women limited authority over other women. It allows older women to control younger women. It allows respectable women to judge ‘modern’ women. It allows women inside the household to feel powerful, while the larger system remains controlled by men.
This is the uncomfortable truth: patriarchy does not always arrive with a male voice. Sometimes it speaks through the voice of a mother, a mother-in-law, a neighbour, a teacher, a religious organiser, or a woman voter who genuinely believes she is defending morality.
Jamaat’s rise should therefore not be read only as a story of Islamist politics. It should also be read as a mirror held up to Bangladeshi society. The party’s appeal reveals how deeply ideas of religion, family honour, gender discipline and political trust are intertwined.
The puzzle is not that women support patriarchy. The puzzle is that patriarchy often gives some women just enough power to defend the system that limits women as a whole.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author
The writer is a Development Communications Strategist. Email: [email protected]
