In Bangladesh’s long and uneven struggle for gender parity, one uncomfortable truth has remained largely undiscussed: the very structures meant to uplift women in politics are, in practice, keeping them sidelined.

Today, 50 seats in the national parliament are reserved for women through party nominations. That is, women are placed in office, not elected to it.

These seats offer no direct mandate from the people, no independent power base, and, too often, no meaningful voice in the legislative process.

What was once pitched as progress has calcified into tokenism. Because representation without accountability isn’t empowerment–it’s privilege masquerading as progress.

Yet the conversation is shifting again, and not necessarily for the better.

A new proposal gaining traction would reserve 100 additional parliamentary seats for women–but this time, through direct elections.

Modeled loosely on India’s 2023 Women’s Reservation Bill, this sounds democratic in theory. In practice, it is anything but.

Under the plan, each reserved seat would cover three general constituencies–creating sprawling “super-constituencies” with hundreds of thousands of voters.

The barriers this would create are immense. Who has the political machinery, wealth, and social capital to run competitive campaigns across such vast districts?

Not the village organizer, not the union-level activist, not the first-time candidate. The system would all but guarantee that these mega-seats go to women from dynastic political families, wives of party financiers, and daughters of powerful businessmen.

And with this, we wouldn’t be empowering women–we’d be reinforcing the same elite order, simply with different faces.

What should be the approach?

If Bangladesh truly seeks to bring women into the center of political life, it must abandon the illusion of top-down empowerment.

The answer lies in something far more structural–and far more democratic: a binding 33 percent nomination quota for women across all 300 general parliamentary seats.

Not reserved seats. Real contests. Real constituencies. Real votes.

Such a reform would force political parties to recruit, support, and develop women leaders from the grassroots. It would root female politicians in actual communities, not party boards.

It would also connect them with constituents, compel them to campaign on issues, and–most importantly–ensure that when women speak in parliament, they do so with the power of a popular mandate.

We have to understand that equality cannot be delegated. It must be earned in the same arena as every other politician–with the people’s consent. Until then, every shortcut will be just that: a detour around real reform, designed to preserve power, not share it.

And to dismantle entrenched gender hierarchies in politics, Bangladesh cannot afford illusions of instant equity. But neither can it justify perpetuating elite capture in the name of inclusion.

A more credible path lies in a hybrid reform—realistic in scale, yet bold in ambition.

That said, a limited number of reserved seats–say 25–can and should remain, but only if they are directly elected and carved out of smaller, manageable geographic units.

This would create winnable constituencies where women from non-elite backgrounds can compete. The remaining 25 currently filled by party nomination can be retained as a transitional measure–no more than that–with a clearly defined sunset clause to phase them out.

Reserved seats must be a ladder, not a permanent platform.

Thinking out of the box

This hybrid model avoids the trap of building campaign structures so expensive and vast that only dynastic women can afford to enter.

Instead, it creates a channel for organic political growth while ensuring representation remains rooted in voter legitimacy.

It also places the responsibility for gender parity exactly where it belongs: within the political parties themselves.

We’ve seen this work elsewhere. In Australia, there are no constitutionally reserved seats for women. Yet today, women hold nearly half the seats in the House of Representatives and a majority in the Senate.

This wasn’t achieved through legislative fiat rather it was built through internal party quotas. When the Australian Labor Party adopted binding gender targets, it forced itself to develop and support women candidates at every level.

The result? Women now campaign, legislate, and lead–not because they were protected, but because they were prepared.

The lesson is clear: political will matters more than symbolic gestures. A quota on paper is meaningless if parties treat it as a box to tick rather than a structure to transform.

If Bangladesh wants to follow this path, it must demand more from its parties. Reward those that elevate women. Penalize those that don’t. Make gender equity a competitive political issue, not just a moral one.

But no transformation is complete without upstream investment.

For decades, the engine of Bangladesh’s national leadership has been campus politics. Every major political figure–from prime ministers to cabinet ministers–has passed through the dormitories and debating halls of university campuses.

And yet, for female students, these spaces remain deeply unequal–often discouraging, sometimes unsafe.

We cannot expect women to lead in parliament if they are not allowed to speak on campus.

Fixing this pipeline means reimagining student politics. We need structural guarantees–women must hold a third of all leadership roles in student organizations across universities.

Student union elections must be revived and made genuinely free and fair, with serious protections in place to ensure women’s participation is not only permitted but safe.

Training programs in campaigning, debate, and policymaking must be normalized for female student leaders.

And perhaps most critically, a zero-tolerance policy for harassment must be enforced–not as window dressing, but as an essential condition for engagement.

Because if we don’t build leaders in the dormitories, we won’t find them in parliament. And if we don’t invest in power from the ground up, we will be left with a democracy that looks equal only on paper.

Examples are all around

If Bangladesh is serious about building women’s leadership, it needs only look next door.

At India’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, the student union presidency has been held by women like Aishe Ghosh—vocal, visible, and unapologetically political.

In Pakistan, female students at Punjab University have led protests, organized around social justice, and carved out a real stake in campus politics.

These are not just ornamental achievements. They are signs of functioning political ecosystems where young women can emerge as organizers, negotiators, and public voices before they ever enter parliament.

Bangladesh, too, can create these ecosystems—but only if it revives student union elections and makes space for women beyond tokenized roles.

It’s not enough to assign them the title of cultural secretary or coordinator of women's affairs. They must be elected as general secretaries, presidents, policy leads—the ones with actual influence over political strategy and campus governance.

This is a strategic investment. The women who are tested, shaped, and emboldened in these spaces will, years later, become organizers, parliamentarians, ministers.

Not because they were gifted seats by party bosses, but because they earned them in the political trenches—just as their male counterparts always have.

But let’s be clear about the goal.

Too often, we conflate access with authority. A nominated seat may bring a woman to parliament, but it doesn’t necessarily give her power.

Without the experience of contestation, without a real constituency behind her, she is expected to represent half the country while speaking from the margins of decision-making.

Reserved seats can be tools of inclusion–but when misused, they become little more than ornamental politics.

We must stop pretending this is empowerment. It is, at best, accommodation–and at worst, erasure dressed up as progress.

The objective has never been to shield women from politics. It is to prepare them for it. To demand that they engage with the chaos and compromise of democracy, and to insist that they do so as equals—not guests.

That means building accountability into party structures. It means opening the doors not to ceremonial inclusion, but to real competition.

And it means putting in place the systems—on campus, in parties, in unions—that will produce not just participants, but contenders.

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Shamaruh Mirza is an Australia based medical scientist with a deep passion for justice, dignity, and equality