On a late autumn afternoon in Rangpur, I sat quietly at the back of a cramped classroom as a 17-year-old girl named Samia solved an accounting problem faster than the teacher could erase the board. She didn’t boast. She didn’t seek praise. She simply worked with the calm precision of someone who knew exactly who she wanted to become. Later, on a long, rattling bus ride back to Dhaka, I found myself replaying our conversation—her dream of becoming a chartered accountant, her determination to build a firm that would hire women “who deserve better than the world gives them.” She said it lightly, but her conviction stayed with me long after the landscape faded into darkness.

A week later, in Khulna, I met two sisters—Nusrat and Nuri—who ambushed me with questions about scholarships, interview skills, and how to convince parents that girls can build careers in technology. Their energy was electric. Their curiosity was relentless. If ambition made a sound, the room would have been thunderous.

Again and again, across districts and classrooms, their faces returned to me: bright, articulate girls with sharper plans than most young men their age. Girls with focus. Girls with hunger. Girls with momentum.

And yet, months later, when I walked through offices, factories, leadership workshops, and professional meetings across the country, those girls were nowhere to be found.

It was as if someone had switched off a constellation.

That absence—silent but unmistakable—began to haunt me. Where were the girls who once sat in front rows? Where were the ones who topped their classes, carried their families’ hopes, and spoke with a confidence that suggested they were ready to break barriers?

The uncomfortable truth is that these young women do not vanish.
They are erased—slowly, quietly, systemically.

The Promise That Fades Too Soon

Bangladesh’s girls excel early. They outperform boys in almost every academic category. They take school more seriously. They articulate career goals clearly. They thrive in structured learning. When you speak to them, you encounter clarity; when you speak to their male peers, you often encounter improvisation.

And yet the pipeline that starts full in classrooms becomes nearly empty by the time you reach boardrooms.

This is not because women lack competence.
It is because the system lacks courage.

The Barriers Have Familiar Names

The obstacles facing young women in Bangladesh are depressingly predictable.

Family expectations arrive first:
“Help in the kitchen.”
“Don’t stay out too late.”
“Girls must be careful.”
“Career is important, but marriage is more important.”

These expectations are presented as love, but they operate as limitations. Girls are overloaded with domestic responsibilities not because they lack ambition but because society assigns them an endless list of unpaid, invisible jobs.

Then societal norms follow. Women are expected to choose “safe” careers, avoid late-night work, prioritise family reputation, and carry the burden of everyone’s honour except their own.

And finally, organisational biases seal the fate.
A young woman is passed over for leadership because she “might get married soon.”
She is denied a project because she “might struggle with travel.”
She is excluded from management tracks because “women don’t handle pressure well.”

Talent is not the problem.
Opportunity is.

The Vanishing Act

The disappearance is not dramatic. It is incremental.

A girl drops out after her HSC because marriage is arranged “just in time.”
Another completes a degree but cannot move cities for work.
A third joins a company but resigns after childbirth because flexible work arrangements simply do not exist.
A fourth stays in her job but is kept away from leadership roles through the soft violence of discouragement.

In every case, the system extracts brilliance and returns confinement.

During a late-night ride back home after a research trip, I stared at my own reflection in the bus window and wondered:
How many Samias, Nusrat, and Nuris have we lost?
How many dreams have we domesticated into silence?
How many ambitions have we negotiated out of existence?

The answer is this: an entire generation’s worth.

The Ambition Gap That Should Alarm Us

Fieldwork reveals something striking. Boys are drifting; girls are planning. Boys hesitate; girls prepare. Boys imagine success vaguely; girls map it meticulously.

If this trend continues, Bangladesh will become a country where half its workforce is discouraged and the other half disengaged.

It is not a talent crisis.
It is a translation failure.
We simply do not translate girls’ early brilliance into long-term opportunity.

What Must Change

The solutions are neither mysterious nor complicated.
They require willpower—not workshops.

• Reform education to include empowerment, not just exams.
• Mentorship programs connecting female students with female professionals.
• Family engagement campaigns that challenge the myth that safety equals restriction.
• Organisational reforms that guarantee flexible hours, anti-harassment enforcement, and transparent promotion pathways.
• Investment in mental security, because no girl thrives in fear.

Most importantly, celebrate women’s achievements publicly and consistently, so girls grow up seeing leadership not as exception but as expectation.

The Cost of Ignoring Reality

If we fail to act, Bangladesh will lose something far more valuable than GDP points or productivity—we will lose the very women who could transform this nation. A country cannot grow if half its potential workforce is confined to kitchens or silenced in office corridors.

The tragedy is not that girls disappear.
The tragedy is that we let them.

Reclaiming the Light

So where do these bright young women go?

Into early marriages.
Into unpaid domestic labour.
Into organisational corners where ambition goes to die.
Into cultures that fear female independence.
Into silence—because silence is what society trains them to carry.

But here is the truth: they do not disappear willingly.
They disappear because the world around them dims the light.

If we want the constellation to glow again—if we want to see the bright, fierce, determined women we keep losing—we must stop demanding that they shrink.

Bangladesh’s future is not male.
It is not female.
It is the brilliance we allow to live.

Let us not extinguish another star.