Why regional diplomacy needs a feminist lens

In Dhaka, BIMSTEC is focusing on bringing neighbouring countries closer together by improving trade, technology, and mutual security. Meanwhile, in Delhi, BRICS stepped up as a powerful voice for the developing world. Both reflect a legitimate ambition for stronger economies, greater strategic autonomy, and a more balanced global order. But they raise a question conventional regional diplomacy rarely asks: why is the architecture of regionalism still largely designed from the perspective of states, markets, and security, and only subsequently asks how people fit into it?

This is where a feminist lens becomes useful. What does regionalism look like when viewed through the experiences of women, youth, and diverse communities rather than from the podiums of states? If regional integration is only about moving goods, capital, energy, technology, and people across borders, what happens to the unpaid care, informal labour, insecurity, and unequal power that make that movement possible? Who decides what gets prioritised? These are questions about the architecture itself.

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BIMSTEC’s agenda encompasses trade, connectivity, security, climate, technology, and people-to-people contact, while Bangladesh holds the chair. Gender is not absent from its wider initiatives. But gender does not yet have the same structural visibility in the core architecture as trade, connectivity, security, technology, and economic development. The problem is structural marginality. BRICS has gone further in creating explicit spaces for women’s economic participation. But does creating a gender pillar change the economic architecture, or accommodate women within an economic model whose fundamental assumptions remain unchanged?

A new corridor may move goods faster. But can women access the jobs and markets it creates? A digital economy may expand opportunity. Who owns the technology and controls the finance? Regional trade may increase exports. Who provides the unpaid care that allows workers and businesses to function? Regional integration can be economically successful and socially incomplete. Bangladesh’s elected government has set an ambitious goal of building a one-trillion-dollar economy. But where are women in that story?

A recent UN Women-BBS estimate valued unpaid household and care work at Tk 670,000cr in 2021—equivalent to 18.9 percent of GDP—with women responsible for 85 percent of that contribution. Women’s labour-force participation was 38.6 percent in 2025, compared with 80.4 percent for men.

So, what will a trillion-dollar economy mean for women’s lives? Will women merely enter the economy as workers and consumers, or will they help shape, own, and benefit from it? Will growth reduce their unpaid care burden, expand access to finance and technology, create decent work, and increase their influence over economic policy? Or will we continue to measure the formal economy while relying on an invisible economy of women’s labour to sustain it? These are economic questions and questions about security.

Our region is dealing with rising political turmoil, climate disasters, and forced migration. But when leaders talk about ‘security,’ they mostly just mean protecting borders and government interests. A feminist approach asks: secure for whom?

Women and young people are not simply vulnerable populations to be protected. They are political actors, peacebuilders, and leaders of social change. Bangladesh’s experience is instructive. Women and young people played visible roles in the civic mobilisation that reshaped the country in 2024, yet the 2026 election produced only seven directly elected women among 300 seats. If regional institutions are serious about resilience and preventing conflict, they should invest in women’s and youth leadership not as a social add-on, but as part of the infrastructure of peace.

This is where Bangladesh’s current BIMSTEC chairmanship offers an opportunity. Bangladesh could champion genuine people-centred regionalism. That means assessing connectivity by more than roads and trade volumes; measuring economic integration alongside decent work, social protection, and care; ensuring climate and infrastructure investments strengthen women’s security and agency; and giving women and young people meaningful influence over regional priorities, resources, and rules.

The same principle should guide Bangladesh’s economic ambition. We should not ask only how the economy can create opportunities for women. We should ask how women will help design the economy as investors, business owners, policymakers, innovators, workers, and leaders.

The emerging regionalism of the Global South has an opportunity to correct more than the imbalance between North and South. It can challenge inequalities within our own societies. The test of BIMSTEC, BRICS and Bangladesh’s economic ambition will ultimately be whether ordinary people experience greater security, opportunity, voice, and dignity.

Regionalism should not begin with the state and end with a reference to women, youth, and diverse populations. It should begin with people’s lives.

Farah Kabir is country director at ActionAid Bangladesh.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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