Maher Sattar
“I don’t think any other commission’s report has gotten so much attention,” says Maheen Sultan, one of the members of Bangladesh’s women’s affairs reform commission.
It’s hard to disagree. Sultan’s commission was set up by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus’s interim government to help introduce major structural reforms after years of authoritarian rule under the ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina. The women’s commission, one of 11 set up across different areas to propose reforms in the wake of last year’s Monsoon Revolution that removed Hasina from power, was set up a little later than most of the others — at the time it felt like an afterthought. Today, it is the target of mass protests by religious groups that have vocally opposed not just the commission, but the very idea of gender equality.
The commission’s members were ambitious from the start, and delivered a report with 423 recommendations, ranging from changes in legal rights to health and labor policy. A handful have become the focal point of protests — equal inheritance for women; recognition of informal workers, including sex workers; and criminalization of marital rape. Since colonial times, the domestic sphere has been one of the few areas where Islamic law has been formally recognized in Bangladesh and leaders of prominent religious groups Jamaat-e-Islam and Hefazat-e-Islam see these proposals as an erosion of their sphere of influence.
I spoke to Sultan, who alongside sitting on the commission is also one of the founders of the Center for Gender and Social Transformation at BRAC University in the capital Dhaka. We discussed what the commission is trying to achieve, and how the protests might actually be drawing more attention to their proposals. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Maher Sattar: You must have anticipated some pushback when you published your report. Twenty thousand people calling for you to step down — did you expect anything like this?
Sultan: I don’t think we anticipated this degree of opposition. I mean, we have always faced opposition. But what was shocking was the fact that they made it very personal, with personal attacks and insults and name-calling and threats, instead of engaging on the issues.
Attacking the commission, saying we were not qualified to make these recommendations, that we didn’t carry out enough consultations, that we don’t represent all the women of Bangladesh, trying to discredit us without trying to engage on: “Why did you make this recommendation?”
But what is very encouraging is that it made more people interested in our report, wanting to know: “What are these issues that they’re so upset about?” And it’s created a whole debate which is going on.
The personalized aspect of the attacks sounds quite familiar actually, it feels like it fits a pattern of attacks on women in the public sphere outside of Islamic contexts.
Like discrediting people by calling our commission members sex workers.
Whatever, we work with sex workers, we think they should be given respect and recognized. So that in itself — I don’t mind being called a sex worker, but it was not meant in that way. It was meant as a way to delegitimize us, to say that these are not even women, who are they to speak on these issues?
That’s a very bad way of dealing with discussions.
One of the recommendations that seem to have struck a particular nerve is criminalization of marital rape. Could you tell me about the dynamics around this issue in the country?
Marriage is seen as a religious bond, as something very private, something that should be based on affection, etc, etc. But we know that there is a great deal of violence within the family.
Rates that have come out in various surveys show that it’s high, and it’s not just verbal abuse or economic abuse or mental abuse, it’s also physical and sexual abuse. And we have seen in the media that there are cases that even result in death. So we can’t deny the existence of marital violence and marital rape.
We have been trying for a long time to familiarize people with the idea of consent — that even in a marital relationship, both parties have to agree and consent on their relationship. The idea that women can have a say is something many people are not familiar with, or willing to recognize or understand. Even among women, there are disagreements — “How will you prove it? What is marital rape? At what degree will you start saying that it is rape and not just coercion or something else?” These are things that need to be debated.
But I think the idea that not all kinds of relationships are healthy, respectful, equal relationships, even within a married life, has to be recognized. I think this is pushing boundaries. I don’t know how we would be able to legislate it or prove it in court. Those are challenges that will come up slowly, but at least people are talking about it.
Why do you think your commission’s recommendations have sparked more outrage than the others?
Well, I think anything that deals with women is seen as a very personal issue, a very emotional issue. And people bring in religion whenever it comes to women’s rights, because women’s rights are seen as belonging to the personal sphere.
But I think women’s role in society has changed, is changing and will change. Women are no longer just dependent on the male head of household. They are working. They are, in many families, equal bread earners; in some families, they’re the main bread earner. So women’s role in society is not the same as it was 20 years ago, 50 years ago.
Realities are changing, needs are changing. People’s aspirations are changing. Our aspirations for having a society which is based on equality is getting stronger. So how is this new Bangladesh different after last year’s uprising?
One of the main principles was non-discrimination — making systemic changes to bring about greater equality and remove various kinds of biases. So that seemed to us a very important opening to bring out the discriminations that women face and to put on the table the dreams and aspirations of women for a different kind of society based on equality.
When I spoke a few months ago with your colleague Shireen Huq, she told me that she herself had to come to terms with the changing nature of the country — that the youth were in many ways much more religious than during her generation. How do you feel about that?
I don’t think the protests, with all the men on the street screaming and all of that, reflects Islam for me.
I have very religious people in the family, and religious doesn’t mean fundamentalist. Religious doesn’t mean anti-women. Religion is very much compatible with a respect for human rights, respect for equality. So I don’t see any contradiction at all. So I think it’s more political, rather than a religious opposition that we’re facing, and probably the political parties will have to deal with it politically.
There are young women who would have very strong secular views, but there are also young women with very strong religious views. But even women with religious views, their aspirations are changing, and the kind of family, the kind of future they want, is not the same as what these very conservative men would want. And even the young religious men are changing their thinking about what an ideal family would be, or what an ideal relationship would be. So I hope that there won’t be this strong religious divide dividing the population, because I do see a very moderate Islam and a very progressive Islam as well.
