Three Out of Four Women: What Bangladesh's Biggest-Ever Survey Just Confirmed
When the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics released the full findings of its 2024 Violence Against Women Survey in October 2025, the numbers were stark enough to silence any remaining debate about the scale of the problem. Three out of four women — 76 percent — had experienced at least one form of intimate partner violence in their lifetime. In the past twelve months alone, 49 percent of women reported such violence. The survey, conducted with 27,476 respondents across all eight administrative divisions and funded by the Australian government, is the largest of its kind ever conducted in Bangladesh and one of the largest globally.
The data tracks a decade of change. In 2015, the previous survey recorded 66 percent of women experiencing intimate partner violence in the past year. That figure dropped to 49 percent by 2024 — a 17-percentage-point decline that represents genuine if incomplete progress. But 49 percent still means tens of millions of women. And some subgroups show numbers that are far worse than the national average: married adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 face the highest risk, with more than 62 percent experiencing intimate partner violence in the past year alone. Women in disaster-prone areas — a significant portion of Bangladesh's coastal geography — experience lifetime rates of 81 percent, against 68 percent in other regions.
Behind the statistics is a culture of silence. According to the survey, 64 percent of women who experienced physical or sexual violence from their husbands never told anyone. Not a family member. Not a neighbor. Not a police officer. Awareness of the government's emergency helplines remains limited — only 45 percent of women surveyed knew about the 999 emergency number, and just 12 percent were aware of the 109 domestic violence hotline.
The Justice Gap: What Happens When a Case Is Filed
Filing a case in Bangladesh's legal system is not the end of a survivor's ordeal — it is often the beginning of a different kind of suffering. Police records from headquarters show that incidents of violence against women and children have been climbing sharply. In the last four months of 2024, police logged 5,795 such cases. In the first four months of 2025, that number jumped to 7,028. Monthly data shows a consistent spike from around 1,500 reported cases per month in early 2023 to approximately 2,000 per month by mid-2025.
But reported cases and justice are very different things. Barrister Sara Hossain, executive director of Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST) and a senior Supreme Court lawyer, has been unequivocal: "Reports indicate that over 1,000 to 1,500 incidents of harassment appear in the media every month. Yet there is no comprehensive data on convictions or protection for survivors." The conviction rate under the Suppression of Repression against Women and Children Act — the primary legal instrument used to prosecute gender-based violence — is widely acknowledged to be extremely low, with lengthy delays, insufficient witness protection, and courts clogged with backlogs.
Data from the Human Rights Support Society tells a grimmer story about what is actually happening to reported cases. From 2020 to 2024, the organization documented at least 11,758 women and girls as victims of abuse and violence, including 6,305 rape cases. Of those rape victims, 3,471 — more than 55 percent — were under the age of 18. One thousand and eighty-nine women and girls were gang-raped. Two hundred and seven victims were murdered following sexual assault, including 118 children. These are the cases that made it into verified open-source records. The actual figures, accounting for the profound culture of non-reporting, are almost certainly higher.
The UK government's country policy assessment on Bangladesh, published in January 2024, described the situation with clinical accuracy: laws exist on paper, but they "remain largely unimplemented due to gender stereotypes and bias, lack of gender sensitivity on the part of law enforcement officials, lack of human and financial resources, and limited witness protection, corruption and delays in the criminal justice system." Police, the assessment noted, often view domestic violence as a family matter rather than a criminal one — a posture that simultaneously normalizes abuse and signals to potential perpetrators that the state is not watching.
The Reform Commission and Its 433 Recommendations
The interim government of Muhammad Yunus moved unusually fast on institutional reform after taking power in August 2024. By November 2024, a 10-member Women's Affairs Reform Commission had been formed, chaired by Shireen Parveen Huq, a founding member of the feminist organization Naripokkho. After 43 internal meetings and 39 consultative sessions with marginalized groups — garment workers, indigenous women, domestic laborers, women with disabilities — the commission submitted its report to Chief Adviser Yunus on April 19, 2025. The report contained 433 recommendations organized under 15 thematic areas.
The most politically charged proposals directly targeted the structural foundations of discrimination. The commission recommended a Uniform Family Code to replace religion-based personal laws governing marriage, divorce, and inheritance — laws that currently give daughters half the inheritance share of sons under Muslim personal law, and even fewer rights under Hindu law. It called for the criminalization of marital rape — currently not recognized as such under Bangladeshi law. It proposed that 300 of an expanded 600-seat parliament be reserved for women, elected directly rather than through the existing nominated quota system. And it recommended that Bangladesh withdraw its reservations to CEDAW, the international convention on women's rights, which successive governments had maintained for decades.
The response was immediate. On May 4, a writ petition was filed at the High Court challenging the legality of several recommendations, describing them as contrary to Islamic Shariah and inconsistent with the constitution. Nearly 20,000 supporters of the Islamist organization Hefazat-e-Islam rallied in Dhaka's streets to oppose the reforms, with protesters chanting that "men and women can never be equal." Human Rights Watch responded publicly, calling on the Yunus government to denounce the attacks on women's fundamental rights and implement the commission's findings. The proposed Uniform Family Code — politically the most explosive recommendation — was framed as optional in its first phase, a deliberate concession to make it more politically viable. Critics argued the optional framing undermined its entire purpose.
The Sexual Harassment Law Bangladesh Does Not Have
Since 2009, Bangladesh Mahila Parishad has been advocating for a standalone law against sexual harassment in public spaces, workplaces, and educational institutions. Sixteen years later, no such law exists. The country operates under 2009 High Court guidelines on sexual harassment — directives without legislative teeth, routinely ignored by employers and institutions. Masuda Rosy, a veteran BMP feminist activist who has contributed to drafting proposed legislation, described the core problem plainly: "Violence against women is so normalized in our society that sexual harassment is often not seen as a crime. Without a formal law, it is difficult to hold perpetrators accountable."
The Women's Affairs Reform Commission's report included this gap as a specific recommendation: a new sexual harassment law based on the 2009 guidelines, with clarity, enforceability, victim-friendly trial procedures, and accountability mechanisms. The commission's report also highlighted technology-facilitated gender-based violence as a rapidly growing threat — 8.3 percent of women surveyed had experienced some form of it, a category that barely existed as a measurable phenomenon in the 2015 survey. With over 50 million Facebook users in Bangladesh and mobile internet penetration continuing to expand, this category is expected to grow significantly.
South Asia's Wider Pattern and Where Bangladesh Sits
Bangladesh's numbers do not exist in isolation. Across South Asia, intimate partner violence rates are among the highest globally, driven by a combination of patriarchal social norms, low female economic autonomy, early marriage, and justice systems that have historically treated the domestic sphere as beyond the state's legitimate reach. India's National Family Health Survey data consistently shows that roughly one-third of married women have experienced spousal physical or sexual violence. Pakistan's Human Rights Commission documents systematic underreporting and a legal framework that has historically made prosecution difficult. Nepal and Sri Lanka show lower but still significant rates.
What distinguishes Bangladesh's current moment is the unusual combination of high-quality new data, an active reform commission with detailed and actionable recommendations, and a transitional government without the electoral constraints that typically lead mainstream politicians to avoid confronting religious personal laws. The 2024 Violence Against Women Survey is, as UNFPA Representative Catherine Breen Kamkong described it, a mandate: "This report must mark the beginning of transformative action to prevent violence, strengthen services, and ensure justice for survivors."
The obstacles are real and deeply embedded. The court challenge to the commission's recommendations, the Hefazat-e-Islam protests, the optional framing of the Uniform Family Code — these are not noise. They reflect genuine political constraints that any government attempting reform will have to navigate. But the data is no longer deniable. Three out of four women. Forty-nine percent in the past year. Sixty-two percent of adolescent girls. These are not projections or estimates. They are the findings of the largest survey of its kind ever conducted in this country.
win-tk.org is a wintk publication covering global affairs and culture for Bangladeshi and South Asian audiences.
