Every few years, an old argument returns dressed up as divine wisdom. This time, it comes from the Amir of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Dr. Shafiqur Rahman announced-solemnly-that a woman can never lead his party. Why? Because women give birth and men do not. God, we are told, has settled the question.

One could simply smile and move on. Bangladesh has heard this sermon before, usually right before reality proves it wrong. But when such claims are presented as religious truth and proposed as political principle, they deserve to be examined-and gently laughed out of the room.

Stripped of theological wrapping, the claim is simple: women are not the equals of men. Men are destined to lead; women are destined to reproduce and raise children. Leadership belongs to the public sphere; motherhood to the private one. Hence Jamaat's conclusion: women belong at home.

That logic explains a telling fact. In an election with 300 parliamentary seats, Jamaat and its allies could not find a single woman candidate. Not one. In Jamaat's political imagination, half the population is permanently disqualified from authority.

History offers a useful preview of where such thinking leads. When gender hierarchy hardens into state policy, the result is not moral order but social suffocation. Look at today's Afghanistan, where girls are barred from school after age twelve, women are excluded from most professions, forbidden to walk alone in public, and even punished for speaking loudly-all in the name of divine decree.

Bangladesh, of course, offers a very different record. For much of its modern history, the country has been governed by two women who did not merely occupy office but dominated political life. Male colleagues addressed them as "Sir." Whatever one thinks of their policies, the claim that women cannot lead in Bangladesh is not just outdated-it is absurd.

There was a time when women were unequal to men, and in many places they still are. But not because they lack ability-because they are denied opportunity. Power, rule-making, and discipline have long been male monopolies. The moment women are allowed outside the home, or the playing field is even slightly leveled, the results are unmistakable.

Bangladeshi women now win international football titles. They carry the national flag to Himalayan summits. Women police officers from Bangladesh have served with distinction as UN peacekeepers in war-ravaged places like Haiti. These are not symbolic achievements; they are demonstrations of competence under pressure.

Education tells the same story. Today, more girls than boys in Bangladesh are entering school. As of 2024, primary enrollment stood at 98 percent for girls, compared with 90 percent for boys. At the secondary level, girls outperform boys in every major examination. In the 2025 HSC exams, girls' pass rates exceeded boys' by eight percentage points-62 percent versus 54 percent.

Where social barriers loosen further, the gap widens. In the United Kingdom, women outperform men at university: 86 percent graduation rates for women, compared with 81 percent for men. Among 19-year-olds, 56 percent of women enter higher education, while only 40 percent of men do. The disparity has become so alarming that British policymakers now debate special interventions for boys, including proposals for a "Minister for Boys."

Modern science, meanwhile, has quietly dismantled Jamaat's biological claims. Cognitive science shows no overall intelligence gap between men and women, but it does find average female advantages in verbal memory, emotional regulation, and managing complex, socially embedded tasks-skills central to leadership.

So why are women absent from Jamaat's leadership? Not because they give birth. Childbearing is a biological process, not a leadership test. Leadership requires strategic judgment, organizational skill, and calm decision-making in moments of crisis. In none of these areas are women less capable than men.

History provides ample evidence. Think of Indira Gandhi in 1971. Or consider economist Amartya Sen's research on the 1974 Bangladesh famine, which showed that many families survived because women managed scarce household resources-planning, rationing, preserving, and distributing food to maximize survival. Think today of Gaza or war-torn Sudan. Many will perish, but many who survive will do so because women held families together under extreme conditions.

When pressed, Jamaat's final refuge is religion. Yet from the earliest days of Islam, women appear in decision-making roles, in public life, even on the battlefield. This is not marginal history; it is foundational.

Nearly a thousand years ago, the great Islamic philosopher Abu Rushd explained why women were excluded despite equal ability. In the preface to his translation of Plato's Republic, he wrote that there is no difference between men and women in knowledge, virtue, or leadership capacity; exclusion arises from social custom, not divine law.

A millennium later, Begum Rokeya made the same point in Sultana's Dream, her celebrated science fiction, where she used satire to show that women's subordination has nothing to do with biology or religion-only with rules men make for their own convenience.

Today, Jamaat claims to support women's rights, even proposing a five-hour workday for women to ease child-rearing. But this too misses the point. Children are not raised by women alone. The real issue is childcare, not women's employment. Recognizing this, New York's new mayor has moved to guarantee publicly funded childcare for every family.

Jamaat could learn from that insight-if it wished. The question is not whether women can lead. History, science, faith, and common sense have already answered that. The real question is whether Jamaat is willing to catch up with the world it seeks to govern.

Hasan Ferdous is a journalist and author, based in New York