The Bedsheet Theory of Women's Success

Bangladeshi politics has developed a rather peculiar merit test for women. When men rise to power, they are described as intelligent, strategic, visionary, skilled organizers who understand the game of politics.

The moment a woman comes close to power, the entire nation suddenly transforms into an intelligence agency. What follows is a forensic investigation into her body, her private life, and her moral character.

As if no woman could possibly reach a position of leadership through political competence, popularity, hard work, or perseverance. One of the cheapest, laziest, and most popular explanations used against women is that, somewhere along the way, she must have "taken her clothes off."

Throughout the long history of patriarchy, one of the oldest ways of diminishing women's political power has been to reduce it to a question of sexual morality. Political disagreements are dragged into the realm of personal gossip, and criticism turns into a violent form of character assassination.

This was precisely the statement made by one Meer Zahan, who identifies himself as a "political analyst, journalist and social media activist": 

"Outside of family quota selections, is there any female MP selected by BNP for reserved seats who can state loudly that she did not have to remove her clothes to become an MP?"

Read that statement again, slowly. 

The statement does not ask whether there is internal democracy within the BNP. It does not question whether dynastic politics harms political parties. It does not examine the structural barriers women face on their path to leadership. 

Instead, it forthrightly states that if a woman has come close to power, she must have arrived there in exchange for her body.

This is where the problem becomes deeply patriarchal, political, misogynistic, and fundamentally about power.

These questions are never directed at male politicians. Have you ever heard anyone ask a male minister whether he had to "take his clothes off" to secure his cabinet position?

Has any male MP been asked whether he used his body to gain the confidence of the party leadership? Has the rapid rise of a male student leader ever been explained through "bedroom politics"?

Instead, we ask men entirely different questions. How many people did they have to manage? How much flattery did they engage in? How many doors did they knock on?

How many political deals did they negotiate? We even dignify these practices with respectable labels such as networking, political skill, and strategic acumen.

But when a woman succeeds, our collective imagination struggles to move beyond the bedsheet.

This is about more than insulting women. It is a naked confession of patriarchy itself. It reveals an inability to believe that a woman can occupy positions of power as an autonomous political actor.

Women's achievements are therefore translated into sexual transactions because, for patriarchy, that is the most comprehensible language of power.

Feminist philosopher Martha Nussbaum argued that women in mainstream politics are often denied recognition as autonomous individuals and are instead treated as objects.

They cease to be acknowledged as full political agents and become bodies to be evaluated, controlled, and humiliated.

The political function of this language is profound: it discourages women from entering public life. Research by the Inter-Parliamentary Union found that sexist abuse, character assassination, and threats of sexual violence significantly reduce women's political participation.

Many women choose not to stand for election. Others limit their public engagement. Many suppress their leadership ambitions altogether. In other words, these statements do not simply attack individual women; they shrink the democratic possibilities of society itself.

There is also an important class and intersectional dimension to this discussion. Women from political families, women from rural backgrounds, minority women, working-class women, and women marginalised because of their religious identities do not enter politics under the same conditions.

Kimberlé Crenshaw demonstrated that women's experiences are shaped by the complex intersections of class, religion, family background, and social location. Critiquing dynastic politics is therefore entirely legitimate and necessary. But translating that critique into the language of sexual humiliation transforms a political question into an act of patriarchal violence.

Dynastic politics exists across almost all major political parties in Bangladesh. It exists within the Awami League, the BNP, and the Jatiya Party. Even Jamaat has its own structures of kinship networks, loyal circles, and inherited influence. Criticising dynastic politics is democratically valid.

Criticizing dynastic politics is not the same thing as sexually degrading women. One is a critique of structural power; the other is misogyny.

This is precisely where the problem lies. In South Asia, sexual insinuations against women have become normalized as a form of political humour, as though political criticism remains incomplete unless a woman is labelled a prostitute, immoral, or someone's mistress.

And perhaps the greatest irony is that this language often comes from those who present themselves as the exclusive guardians of morality. The very people who lecture society about family values, modesty, religion, and women's dignity frequently choose sexual humiliation as their easiest weapon against female political opponents.

Women's dignity matters, it seems, only until they become political adversaries.

Patriarchy's greatest fear has always been the politically independent woman. And that fear often manifests through the weaponisation of sexuality.

Statements like these send a message to every woman in society: no matter how talented you are, no matter how hard you work, if you enter public life, your body will become a subject of public debate.

Many women therefore step away from politics. Many hesitate to speak in public. Many bury their aspirations to lead.

A political culture that cannot imagine women as independent political actors inevitably returns to patriarchy's oldest explanation: If a woman has succeeded, she must have traded her body for power.

That explanation tells us very little about women. But it tells us almost everything about the society that produces it.

Dr. Lubna Ferdowsi is an academic and researcher based in England.