Himal Interviews: Bangladesh’s stalled feminist movements and present politics

In October 2024, two months after the monsoon revolution in Bangladesh toppled Sheikh Hasina as prime minister and Awami League government, four gender experts wrote a column in the Bangladesh newspaper Prothom Alo about the women leaders of the movement. They said that these women had been invisibilised in the initiatives and discussions around rebuilding Bangladesh. 

In the months since Hasina’s ouster and the formation of an interim government, Bangladesh saw a resurgence of its Islamic parties, particularly the Jamaat-e-Islami, in the country’s politics. This has raised concerns about these parties trying to enforce restrictions on women’s participation in public life. In February, for example, a group called the Islami Andolan Bangladesh organised a protest rally in Rangpur in the northern part of the country against a girls’ football match, calling it un-Islamic. Police cancelled the event and asked the teams to return home for their own safety.

There has also been much discussion across the country about incidents of violence against women. In March, students from 30 colleges in Dhaka held a protest against what they called a rise in violence, rape and torture of women, demanding that the interim government institute maximum punishments for perpetrators. This protest ended in clashes between the protesters and law enforcement, an incident that had echoes of the clashes that took place during the monsoon revolution itself. 

Himal’s associate editor Nayantara Narayanan spoke to Samina Luthfa in June 2025, about what was happening with the feminist movement in Bangladesh, and how the country’s politics, which was in a state of flux, was affecting women. With the upcoming general election in Bangladesh in February 2026 many of these questions still loom over the country. 

This interview was recorded on 4 June 2025. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

You can listen to audio versions of this conversation on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.