This year’s celebrations of International Women’s Day in South Asia highlighted the challenges which women and their movements face in the region. However, they also emphasized the growing hope in the emerging alliance with left and progressive movements for a just and environmentally secure world.
India
A program at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi to commemorate the day was organized jointly by left and progressive women’s groups in the country, including All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA), and others.
The speakers raised issues related to the growing threats on their livelihoods under the neoliberal economic policies adopted by the right-wing governments. They also raised the issue of growing violence against women in the country under a government which promotes regressive and divisive ideology. The program ended with calls for more united struggles against the threats from religious, patriarchal, casteist and capitalist regimes.
In Kolkata, hundreds of women marched in the city to demand dignified and equal lives for women, raising slogans against patriarchy and capitalism. Women were led by AIDWA West Bengal State Secretary Kaninika Ghosh, among others.
West Bengal has seen widespread protests in the last year over the rape and murder of a female health professional while on duty in one of the public hospitals in the capital of Kolkata, RG Kar. The agitation still continues under the leadership of left-leaning youth and women groups including AIDWA.
In another part of West Bengal, thousands of women forced the stoppage of work on a coal mine in Deucha Pachami in the tribal-dominated Birbhum district. The women in the area have declared that they do not want the mine which is proposed to be established over 11,000 acres of land. The women claim the mine will not only destroy the local environment by destroying the river and the forest, but also lead to massive displacement.
The state government suspended the internet and and police detained hundreds of men to prevent them from participating in the movement against the mine, yet the women refused to cease their agitation, forcing the state to announce the temporary suspension of the work on the mine.
Several other programs were held in cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, and Kollam, to mark International Women’s Day.
Bangladesh
Hundreds of women, mostly from Dhaka University, took to the streets on Sunday to protest against the failure of the interim government led by Nobel peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus to stop the increasing incidents of violence against women in the country.
The protest was called the “bamboo-rod procession” as women carried bamboo and rods in their hands while marching. It was organized by a joint platform of various women, teacher, and student organizations called Bangladesh Against Rape and Oppression.
The call for the march was given following the incident of rape of an eight-year-old child in Bangladesh’s south-western city of Magura on March 6.
Bangladesh has seen an alarming increase in the incidents of violence against women and children in the last couple of years with over 17, 500 cases registered in 2024 alone. Almost a third of those cases were reported following the formation of the interim government in August. In January 2025, over 1,440 such cases were registered.
The protesting women were demanding resignation of Jahangir Alam Chaudhary, home advisor in Yunus’ interim government. The Yunus government came to power following a large-scale protest that forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and leave the country.
The protesters claim that Chaudhary has completely failed to prevent the ongoing oppression of women in the country. They also demanded the strict implementation of laws enacted to protect women in the country, Prothom Alo reported.
Pakistan
In Pakistan, the organizers of the Aurat March Islamabad (AMI) were prevented from marching to the center of the city by security forces yet again on Saturday. Security forces even took away their announcing system after they tried to march to D-Chowk.
The Aurat March was formed in Pakistan in 2018 as a collective to fight for gender equality in the country. However, it has faced repeated attacks from the state which has denied them permission to organize their programs, filed cases against the activists, and even unleashed violence against them. This has happened every year since 2000.
AMI presented a charter of demands before the march in which it demanded that gender-based violence be recognized as a national emergency. It has also extended solidarity to most of the progressive and working class movements in the country. The state should prioritize the issues of over 120 million women in the country, said Dr. Farzana Bari, one of the leaders of the AMI. Otherwise, she claimed, it may further the crisis of legitimacy that the Pakistan state is facing, Dawn reported.
Organizers of Aurat March confirmed that women’s day marches in several other cities in Pakistan will be organized later in the year. In Lahore, the march has already been organized for February 12.
