Friendship Founder Runa Khan on International Women’s Day 2026
By Runa Khan,
8 March 2026
International Women’s Day! As the world drapes itself in purple, we should ask what we are truly celebrating. We celebrate “rights” while women still negotiate around permission to move, work, inherit, and even report violence. We praise “justice” while systems humiliate survivors and drain their time, money, and courage. We applaud “action” when it is really a momentary flicker of hope for justice.
The colour purple is powerful, but this year’s message is far more than just powerful. It is Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL women and girls.
Yet, this apparent clarity lays bare the truth that we live with half-measures. In 2026, women still hold only 64% of the legal rights men hold worldwide, and no nation has yet closed the gap. This bleak statistic is beyond figures; it is a warning that equality cannot be delivered by goodwill alone. It requires a willingness for a change, laws, budgets, enforcement, and consequences when justice is violated.
Equal justice is when laws from books start to be enforced in real life. Application of the law with the ability to enforce consequences of unjust actions is the decisive factor of whether dignity lives or dies. Dignity in how a woman is received when she walks into a police station; dignity is in how she is heard in a courtroom; dignity in whether she is believed the first time, rather than forced to relive her pain to satisfy a system that doubts her, by default. A survivor-centred justice system is the minimum standard of humanity.
Discriminatory laws are not the only obstacle to equal justice. Lack of enforcement, informal power, corruption, fear of stigma, and the everyday economics of survival are just as culpable. For many women, access to justice is decided by whether she can pay for transport, whether she can leave work without losing wages, whether childcare exists, whether the last mile is safe, whether the institution she approaches will treat her with respect, and whether her community will punish her for speaking. Justice, that is technically available but practically unreachable, is injustice.
This is why political representation is key. When women are not at the table, the rules of the room remain male, and the cost is paid in women’s lives. In Bangladesh, the January 2024 election saw 20 women directly elected to the 300 general seats, which is about 6.67 per cent. With the 50 reserved seats added, the legislature comprised 70 women out of 350 members.
Now look at the contrast in the February 2026 election. Seven women were elected as Members of Parliament, which is only 2.33 per cent. This decline is a warning flare. Reserved seats may increase overall numbers later, but they cannot replace women winning constituencies, chairing committees, shaping legislation, and standing in the full light of political legitimacy. When women’s direct representation shrinks, the space for equal justice shrinks with it, because laws are not neutral. They are shaped by who is present and who is missing.
What would action look like if we took this theme seriously? It would dismantle structural barriers where the law most consistently fails women. Action means enforceable labour rights, ending harmful practices through law, and more women across the justice chain. It also means moving away from the word empowerment only for branding and more towards reforms inside institutions.
And it means we cannot forget the women on the frontlines of climate change, those in hard-to-reach places, in chars and coastal belts, in informal settlements where a disaster is not an event but a daily reality. When climate shocks hit, it is women who walk furthest for seeking water, who are unable to reach and seek health services, yet keep families afloat when income collapses. The one who faces heightened violence in displacement, the ones left behind and very often face denials of access to services. If rights and justice do not reach them, then our slogans are hollow.
Meaningful actions require integrated approaches because women’s lives are interconnected. A woman cannot separate her safety from her livelihood, her health from her mobility, her legal rights from her access to information, nor deal with her climate vulnerability from the infrastructure that fails her. Dignity means services that meet her where she is, linking legal aid to healthcare, protection to livelihoods, and climate adaptation to women’s leadership. It means designing systems around reality, not around institutions’ convenience.
And it also means rejecting performative allyship. Governments must reform discriminatory laws. Organisations must audit their own systems, grievance redressal, pay structures, promotion tracks, travel and safety policies. If justice depends on discretion, it is not justice. If an institution can choose when to believe a woman, when to protect her, and when to promote her, then equality is being treated as charity, not as a right.
Rights. Justice. Action. For all women and girls. Let us make those words real, in law and in life. When you uplift women, you ensure that all of society is uplifted. You strengthen the economy, you protect children, you stabilise communities, and you build resilience for a future which is so often fraught with uncertainties today. Let purple be more than a gesture for a day. Let us draw a single line at equal justice and a non-negotiable goal, for all.
Note: A version of this article was originally published in The Dhaka Tribune on 8 March 2026.
