The concurrent winning of Olympic ice hockey with the women's team at the 2026 Winter Games by the United States men's ice hockey team was meant to be an ideal manifestation of collective exultation. At the podium, it seemed like a victory of equality.
But a viral video was soon released in the locker room of the men who revealed a much different truth. The male athletes were found laughing in an interview on the telephone with a political figure who commented on them demeaningly, saying that unfortunately they had to invite ladies too.
The men were clumsily light-minded instead of admiring their female counterparts, whose success had been hard-fought against great odds and a lack of resources.
This mass-media mentality reveals an obvious fact: The support for feminism is often performative, as it primarily involves appearing publicly alongside women on the same platform. Behind the scenes, this behaviour reflects a cultural disintegration of unity, evident in the reluctance to acknowledge that women are equal in respect. In such situations, women are being treated as tokens to create the illusion of progressive unity.
This illusion of support is not confined to the sports arena; it permeates our most revered institutions, manifesting as "benevolent" or performative feminism within academia.
Academics are increasingly identifying how this tokenism restricts true intellectual and structural progress. As Iffat Anjum, Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations, Bangladesh University of Professionals, notes:
“A key obstacle of benevolent feminism arises from the intellectual compartmentalisation of feminist theories and research areas along gendered lines, where female scholars are implicitly expected to remain confined to gender studies within social science departments, while male faculties often seem lethargic in engaging with gender rights-related academic courses or scholarships. These stereotypes limit broader epistemic engagement.”
Anjum explains that institutions often showcase the formal inclusion of women scholars in non-leading administrative roles purely for symbolic image-building.
Echoing Nancy Fraser’s critique of the glass ceiling, Anjum asserts that such inclusion "frequently remains representational rather than influential, diluting transformative potential and reinforcing gendered power hierarchies within existing academic structures."
Here, too, women are utilised as tokens of performative support rather than empowered as intellectual equals.
This performance of inclusion is carried, unfortunately, into the political arena, where weak citizens in a polity are reduced to being at the mercy of those who are at the decision-making table.
A chilling tale of marginalization is the recent election in Bangladesh that happened in parliament. Among almost 2000 candidates, only seven women were directly elected. Even in the new government, there are only three women in the 50-member cabinet, and none with a full ministerial portfolio.
This situation is aggravated by the fact that the main opposition party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has a doctrine that clearly disengages women in leadership but hypocritically uses women activists in segregated regions during rallies as a means of voting.
This is the ultimate act of political doublethink: Women are considered to be necessary to gather support, but not the right ones to lead it.
Real-life consequences of the absence of true female leadership in the spheres of power are devastating. The last month has been a nightmare in Bangladesh, as there has been a terrifying spurt in violence against women and child abuse and rape that involves atrocious acts.
Instead of dealing with these structural malfunctions, the patricidal chorus is expectedly evasive, victim-blaming women and insisting on hearing the question, “Where are the feminists?”
The question that needs to be asked should rather be, where is the government? Feminism has remained on the front line to combat these ills. Systemic violence cannot be dismantled by jaded women activists alone -- it is the active role of the state.
This depressing fact explains why authentic male comradeship is so desperately required, not simply passive observation and applause acting. Men who admit the flawless equality of women have been waiting too long. Men are much needed to join this movement actively using their privilege to debunk toxic, misogynistic stories.
Feminism is not a zero-sum game but the achievement of a non-oppressive hierarchy; a non-oppressive hierarchy that liberates men of their own gendered straitjackets and enhances morally appropriate caring leadership.
In Bangladesh, gaining more structural male support is not merely a conceptual ideal but rather a real need of a country to develop. Although women have made impressive progress in the field of literacy and economic participation themselves, they require real partners to address structural deficits, not baffled observers.
In a sports locker room, a university classroom, or any other halls of parliament, the success and the security of a woman deserve more than applause.
There is a wall we have to get over between tokenism and reality. Equal voices in all the decision-making tables and honest, unscrupulous comradeship are what we must demand to create an authentic, secure, and fair state.
Naziba Mustabshira is an independent researcher and works at the Organization for Identity and Cultural Development (OICD), Japan and at the Nepal Institute of International Cooperation and Engagement (NIICE). She is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of DhakaThinks, a youth-led think tank.