[The
roots of much of the development work were laid in the aftermath of the
Bangladeshi war for independence from Pakistan in 1971. What started off as
efforts to support the tens of thousands of women who were widowed during the
fighting was later expanded into much wider efforts to alleviate poverty and
facilitate women’s empowerment, said Ferdousi Sultana Begum, senior social
development officer at the Asian Development Bank in Dhaka. ]
By Bettina Wassener
SOMESHPUR, Bangladesh — To
many outsiders, Bangladesh is best known for its poverty and the natural
disasters that hit it with depressing regularity.
When it
comes to the position of women, however, this country has made progress that
would be unthinkable in many other Muslim societies. Bangladeshi women have
served in U.N. peacekeeping
missions. There are women ambassadors, doctors, engineers and pilots. Two
powerful women — the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and her political rival,
Khaleda Zia — have been alternating at the country’s helm for years. The
proportion of parliamentary
seats held by women is 19.7 percent, not much lower than the 22.3
percent in the British House of Commons.
“This is
a country where women are active in every field,” Dipu Moni, the minister of
foreign affairs, said at her office in Dhaka, the capital. Ms. Moni, the
daughter of a prominent politician and a Western-educated lawyer and physician,
has campaigned for years for women’s rights and improved health provisions in
the country.
Such
efforts by successive governments and development organizations have led to
major improvements in the lives of women across the country, with expanded
access to health care and basic education in rural and urban areas. Decades of
microlending and, more recently, the burgeoning garment sector have underpinned
the progress by turning millions of women into breadwinners for their families.
Nur
Jahan, who lives in Someshpur, a ramshackle village of about 1,000 people four
hours from Dhaka, illustrates how tough life remains for many Bangladeshi
women, but also how many women’s lives are transforming.
Ms.
Jahan’s husband abandoned her, penniless and in rags, on the main square of
Someshpur when she was pregnant with her second child about 10 years ago. A
compact and vivacious woman who is about 26 years old — no one keeps exact
records — Ms. Jahan spent years doing odd jobs for other households to keep
herself and her children above water. In a country that ranks as one of the
poorest in the world, she was about as low as it is possible to get.
Then, two
years ago, luck finally arrived, in the form of a development
project that arranged for women who had been widowed or left by
their husbands to get jobs maintaining roads in the vicinity.
The project,
funded by the European Union and the U.N. Development Program, and implemented
with the assistance of local governments, helped about 24,400 women like Ms.
Jahan across Bangladesh.
For two
years, they cleared shrubs and smoothed surfaces. They were paid 100 taka, or
about $1.20, a day. But the savings they accumulated allowed many of them to
buy a plot of land or a humble dwelling. In addition, they were taught to start
tiny businesses that should allow them to make a living going forward.
Ms. Jahan
now makes and sells compost, and trades dried fish. Others in the village sell
wood, cookies or stationery for a slim profit. One became the proud owner of a
hand loom. Instead of being destitute, these women are now merely poor. They
can afford to eat and to send their children to school.
Ms. Jahan
hopes to run for a local government position in a few years. Already, people
come to her for help, she explained proudly. Recently, the relatives of a sick
neighbor asked her to accompany them to the local clinic. Before, they would
have hardly looked at her.
“When I
think about my past, I want to cry,” she said. “When I think about life now, it
is nothing but smiles.”
The roots
of much of the development work were laid in the aftermath of the Bangladeshi
war for independence from Pakistan in 1971. What started off as efforts to
support the tens of thousands of women who were widowed during the fighting was
later expanded into much wider efforts to alleviate poverty and facilitate
women’s empowerment, said Ferdousi Sultana Begum, senior social development
officer at the Asian Development Bank in Dhaka.
“There is
still a long way to go, but there has been a lot of gradual progress,
especially over the past two decades,” she said. Girls’ education, in
particular, has been embraced widely, she added.
Statistics,
too, underline the improvement in women’s lives. The number of births by
teenage mothers, for example, plummeted to 78.9 per 1,000 in 2010 from 130.5 in
2000. That is still high by Western standards (the figure for the United States
is 41.2), but it is below the 86.3 recorded in India.
Fewer
babies die in Bangladesh than in India: 52 out of 1,000, compared with 66 in
India and 87 in Pakistan.
And
population growth has been stemmed. In the late 1980s, women in Bangladesh had
on average 5.1 children. By 2009, the rate had been more than halved, to 2.3.
India has a rate of 2.7, according to the World Bank.
The
progress comes despite the toughest of backdrops. Over all, Bangladesh ranks
146th of 187 countries on an index
measuring human development compiled by the U.N. Development Program — ahead of
Myanmar and many African countries but behind Iraq. Nearly one-third of the
population lives in poverty. Corruption, red tape and poor infrastructure mar
everyday life. Access to clean water and electricity is scarce in the villages
that dot the flat landscape of the country, whose 160 million inhabitants
squeeze into an area smaller than Florida and larger than Greece.
Conservative
traditions are deeply enshrined in this country, where about 70 percent of the
population lives in the countryside. There are frequent reports of domestic
violence, often related to demands for dowry payments. And many women who have
achieved top leadership positions owe their prominence in part to powerful male
relatives.
But while
women in many other Muslim nations are seeing their rights eroded by the rise
of conservative Islamism, this is not the case in Bangladesh. Extremism is a fringe
phenomenon, and women’s development projects encounter little religious
opposition.
The
country is predominantly Muslim, but moderate; Buddhist and Hindu traditions
are widely respected, and there is a widespread acceptance of the concept that
women can work outside the home.
Microlending,
which took off in the 1980s, has allowed many women to start tiny businesses
over the years.
More
recently, millions of people have found work in the garment sector, which
accounts for about three-quarters of exports from Bangladesh.
At the
Mustafa Garments Industries factory in the southeastern port city of
Chittagong, hundreds of women, most in their 20s and early 30s, were recently
bent over sewing machines and cutting tables, making shorts for customers in the
United States and Europe.
The
factory employs about 500 people — 95 percent of them women — who earn between
4,500 and 5,000 taka a month, according to Kallol Majumder, the general
manager. That is about $2 a day — but even that gives them breadwinner status.
And it underlines the fact that women in Bangladesh are not simply recipients
of Western charity, but active economic agents in their own right.
“Bangladesh
is undergoing a structural change in the economy, from agricultural to
manufacturing,” said Stefan Priesner, the U.N. Development Program country
director in Dhaka. “Women have played a huge role in this.”
On the
education front, men still outnumber women in universities. But the number of
women enrolling has risen steadily. In an attempt to help redress the balance,
a women-only university was set up in Chittagong in 2008.
Kamal
Ahmad, a Bangladeshi who worked for many years in development organizations and
as a lawyer in the United States and Britain, spent years raising donations and
lobbying the government for land for the university. The goal for the Asian
University for Women, he said, is to create women leaders capable of bringing
about change across Asia.
The first
class is expected to graduate next year, and many of the students already have
plans to set up businesses, campaign groups, banks or schools in their 12
respective home countries.
“I have a
real responsibility to help social progress,” said Moumita Basak, a bubbly
21-year-old from Chittagong. Her goal: to become a writer, and set up
organizations aimed at promoting social causes.
@ The New York Times
@ The New York Times
