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Economic Dependency and Hidden Electoral Coercion: Exploring Women’s Voting Autonomy within Urban Bangladeshi Households During the 2026 National Election

Keywords

Abstract

Even though the literature on women's political marginalisation so far has been largely focused on institutional barriers to women's political participation, women's economic dependence on male family members as part of the domestic dimension of coercion is an under-researched mechanism. This study aimed to examine the nature and degree of hidden electoral coercion on female voters in urban households by means of their economic dependence before the upcoming national election in 2026 in Bangladesh. The study was conducted using qualitative research design and involved the sampling of 15 urban women for semi-structured interviews that provided rich contextualised data on the impact of financial dependence on women's electoral decision-making. The results indicate that women's financial dependency, from partial to full exclusion from the family's resources, limits their capacity to make their own voting decisions and choices, as interpreted through the Resource Theory of Power (Blood & Wolfe, 1960) and Patriarchal Bargaining Theory (Kandiyoti, 1988). It was also observed that women's voting process in households is influenced using coercive tactics by men like authoritative statements and affective coercion. While there are indications that some women are covertly resisting, however, urbanisation is not a solution to this issue. It theorises how economic dependency in the household is a mechanism of voter suppression, a mechanism that is often overlooked and seen as confined to the outside of the family and provides a unique empirical and theoretical lens on the phenomenon of gendered voter disenfranchisement in South Asia.

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