Flowers being placed in hair Farzana is getting married....for any woman in Bangladesh, it's the day of her life. The event her family's been preparing her for since birth
She's the perfect bride..Weak fragile and utterly helpless.
Bride being fed She musn't talk or even feed herself..she has to appear totally dependent.
All her life she's belonged to her father..but from this day on she's no longer a member of her own family. Now she belongs to her husband-to-be, a man she met only two days before.
FARZANA:I'm just going from this house. Marriage means I'm finishing this life and I'm starting a new life. I used to stay with my parents all these years, but now I have to stay with my husband.
The golden bracelet symbolises what they call her bondage of love.. and bondage is the word that best describes the lives of women in Bangladesh, starting from the day they're born
For most girls life begins in a dirt-floored, thatched-roof hut in a poor rural village.
In the village of Belabo, the Nurul family has a new baby girl. She's three months old,and her name is 'Happy'
Reorter: Why did you call your baby Happy?
Mother: I like the sound of it, and I want her to be happy in life. It's good to put makeup on girls, so they'll look beautiful and people will love them.
But for Happy and her sister Polly, it'll be a struggle just staying alive. Many children die before the age of five.. and mortality is higher among girls. Most families prefer a boy. So girls get less food, less medication and less care.
From adolescence and for the rest of their lives they're virtually confined to the house. As custom and the state religion Islam dictate.
Happy's mother never went to school.. Like most villagers, she doesn't know her age - about 25 she thinks. She's had six children, four of whom died.. She's lucky to have lived herself. Almost half the deaths among women her age occur in maternity. But she must keep on trying until she gives her husband a son.
Husband: It's a problem. If God doesn't give me a son there's nothing I can do. It's very important to have a son. The girls will get married and leave this house. We need a son to stay in this house after we're gone
The village's conservative customs will rule every aspect of each girl's life. They'll marry on average at the age of eleven and a half, bear children in their early teens and probably never learn to read and write.
And life will end in a mud-floored thatched roof hut, just as it began
An incident last year in a village much like this one provided a terrible illustration of the plight of women in Bangladesh . An 18 year old woman who'd divorced and remarried was accused of adultery by a local religious leader, and found guilty by the village's Islamic court. It later turned out she was innocent, but by then it was too late. A Fatwah - or Islamic order - was issued against her, declaring that she must be stoned.
The woman was buried in the ground up to her waist, and 101 stones were hurled at her. The stoning didn't kill her, but the shame was so great she went home and drank insecticide and killed herself. The men responsible were ultimately jailed, and the stoning has become the focus of a national campaign for women's rights in Bangladesh
At the forefront of the fight is Taslima Nasreen, a feminist and author who outrages Bangladesh's establishment with her radical views. Tasleema writes a regular newspaper feature that she calls the 'Rotten Column'
Taslima Nasreen:I write several columns each week . The 'rotten column' is one of them. I call it this because women in this society are seen as rotten. If we talk about progress, if we try to break the unjust rules and regulations of the society, if we try to obtain human dignity and speak out against discrimination, then we are considered rotten. If a woman wants to be a sane and civilised human being, she must first be rotten in the eyes of this society.
Taslima writes about equality and sexuality, and rails against Islam. She breaks all of her society's strictest taboos. Her books are best-sellers, but she's paid the price. Late last year an obscure fundamentalist group declared a fatwah, ordering that she be put to death.
Taslima Nasreen: There were 20 or 25,000 people chanting 'Taslima Nasreen should be hanged.' They demanded the death sentence. They had the same things written on banners. they said 'Taslima is against the religion, she should be killed and all her books banned.
Reporter: Are you attacking Islam?
Taslima: Yes directly
Reporter: That must be a very brave or foolish thing to do in this country?
Taslima: I think it is not foolish work. Our religion doesn't give women any human dignity. Women are considered slaves. It's said woman was made from the rib of man. I write against the religion because if women want to live like human beings, they will have to live outside the religion and Islamic law.
Taslima now lives her life in virtual hiding and under guard. The government regards her as an embarrassment, and prohibits foreign journalists from meeting her. We had to interview her in secret in a Dhaka hotel.
Taslima Nasreen I cannot lead a normal life.
Taslima: I can't go out, I can't be seen in public. The government has done nothing. The government uses Islam politically. They think if they say anything against the fundamentalists they won't be able to stay in power and so they remain silent, and take no action.
Not long after our interview, a warrant was issued by the Dhaka police for Taslima's arrest.. She's charged with outraging religious feeling.. If she's found guilty, she faces two years hard labour in jail.
In a back street of the capital, the Bangladesh women's council carries on the fight. Mainstream feminists like Ayesha Khanam blame not Islam but poverty and lack of education for the plight of women.Bangladesh has a range of laws supposed to protect women.. But as most women can't read, they don't even know they exist.
Ayesha Khanam: When a woman is very poor and dependent on her husband.. a woman who is not literate, educated and conscious enough, she cannot stand. The whole society, the attitude of the society is not in favour of her.
Reporter: What is the attitude to women in this country?
Ayesha: Always society thinks that she is a woman, they never try to think she is first human being, then she is a woman. And they are regarded as the possessions of man. Yes, of course, they think it is their property, yes of course.
Upstairs the women's council keeps a refuge for destitute women and girls.. Rejected by their families and their society, usually through no fault of their own.
Nurjahan has lived here for 8 years.. she was rescued after being kidnapped from her family and forced into marriage - when she was nine years old.
Nurjahan: My father used to do business with this man, and they had a disagreement. They became enemies, so this man kidnapped me and forced me to marry him.
Reporter: How old was the man who kidnapped you?
Nurjahan: I'm not sure, about 30 or 35.
Reporter: And how old were you?
Nurjuran: I was nine.
The women's council helped Nurjahan's family take the man to court and get her back.. But the shame was too powerful to allow her to return home.
Nurjahan: I couldn't go back to my home. After what happened to me it would be shameful to go back
Reporter: Do you think you're blamed for what happened?
Nurjuran: Yes, my family is ashamed of me. And I'm ashamed of myself.
Rokeya - abandoned by her husband and rejected by her family -now has a girl of her own and is determined to give her a better life.
Rokeya: I'll send her to school and try to give her a good life. Education is the most important thing. Without education life has no meaning.
Bangladesh is in the unique position of having a woman as Prime Minister and opposition leader. But the reality is that like Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, both women hold their positions only because they're the wife or daughter of a revered male leader from the country's political past. And they face a daunting battle overcoming the powerful social and religious customs that keep their countrywomen among the most oppressed in the world.
The miserable status of women is a major embarrassment for Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia. The reality simply doesn't fit with her government's determined policy to modernise Bangladesh.
PM Begum Khaleda Zia: Women in Bangladesh enjoy equal rights. There is no discrimination between women and men.
Reporter: With respect PM how can you say women are equal when all the statistics indicate women are among the worst off in the world?
PM: Yes as I said before we had these problems in the past, but now there is no discrimination. Males and females are equal.
Sheikh Hasina (Opposition leader): This is a slogan, it's not the reality.
...The opposition leader Sheikh Hasina begs to differ...
Sheikh Hasina: Every day there's at least one report of a woman being killed or attacked for failing to provide a dowry. They're beaten up and tortured. Women are punished in village courts in violation of the law. They're even stoned. How then can we say that women in this country have equal rights?
The Prime Minister, when pressed, has to agree there's much work to be done.
PM Begum Khaleda Zia: My government has given major emphasis to women. Educating women is our highest priority. They make up half the population. We have to educate women to develop our country.
The government has made education the key to its policy on women. And it’s come up with an ingenious way of making parents keep their girls at school - free wheat.
Under the new food for education program, poor rural families get a monthly wheat ration, in return for keeping their children at school.
Man: It's good because we are poor. Before we couldn't send the children to school, because we couldn't afford books and pens and paper and clothes.
Kafil's son and daughter now attend classes each day. In the villages where the program is being trialed, the government says school attendance is up by as much as 40% especially among girls. They've had to find new classrooms to fit them all in.
But food for education is costing the government nearly 40 million dollars in its first year.
The real task will be persuading her parents to leave young Rokeya in school when the free wheat runs out.
Reporter: How long do you want them to stay at school?
Father: I'll send him to school until he gets his masters degree, if I can afford it. As long as it takes.
Reporter: And the girl?
Father: After she turns twelve she'll get married. She'll be an adult then, how can I keep her at school? I'll have to get her married.
In the capital Dhaka, education is seen as the key to improving the lot of women in Bangladesh. But Dhaka is a long way from the impoverished, illiterate rural areas where 85% of the country's women live. Out here in the countryside programs to educate women have faced hostile opposition from some powerful local religious leaders, who claim that sending girls to school is unislamic because they should be at home.
Two out of three children in Bangladesh never even finish primary school and the drop-out rate is twice as high for girls as it is for boys. Literacy among females is 18%.
In village schools like this one classes are irregular. The teachers don't get paid, so they seldom turn up. Beyond puberty, girls are expected to be kept apart from boys.
Religious teacher. Before adolescence boys and girls can mix freely, but after that girls can only mix with males in their family, like brothers and cousins. We consider free mixing bad, both from a religious and social point of view.
Local Islamic leaders like teacher Abdul Rashid determine the ways of village life. When it comes to school, these teachers say there's only so much girls need to know.
Abdul Rashid: Most of the girls will live their life within the family, so they need to learn enough to run a family. They need to be able to keep the family accounts, and give basic education to the children, and look after the family
Yunus: This is a slum area, that you can see, there are a lot of women, capable women.
But just when a story starts getting depressing, you meet somebody like professor Mohammed Yunus. The Professor seems more revolutionary than banker, but a banker he is. His is no ordinary bank.
Professor Mohammed Yunus: When I told this to the manager he fell from the sky, he couldn't believe I was suggesting he lend money to the poorest people. He said banks cannot lend money to the poor.
Professor Yunus believes the key for women is financial independence. And so he set up the Grameen Bank. Which lends only to poor people, and almost exclusively to women.
Professor Yunus:She's telling me that she started this business when she first got the loan, and she's improved her life. She's paid back the first loan and she took a second loan and she says I'm doing fine.
Woman: No one ever lent money to me before. I never thought it was possible, until I got this money.
She shows us her shack For Amena, money means having a tin roof instead of thatch, and more importantly having the power to change her life.
Woman:At first I was worried about what to do with the money and whether I could pay it back, then I realised I could. Next time I'll borrow more, and do even more with it.
Professor Mohammed Yunus: Many of the women we lend to, it's the first time they've touched money in their life, and they'll be in tears holding that money.
Professor Yunus's bank now lends out more than 50 million dollars a month, almost all of its 2 million customers are poor, rural women. The repayment rate is higher than for a conventional bank.
Professor Mohammed Yunus: Giving money brings power to women.
One of the worst things about poverty and being a woman in a poor country is you don't have personal dignity, personal esteem, self-confidence, you know you are somebody, so out of being nobody you become somebody and that's a tremendous change.
But change is coming slowly.
It's now the night of the wedding. Farzana waits, alone and on display.
The celebrations go on without her.
Upstairs in a separate room, the jubilant groom enjoys a feast fit for a king. He's waited on, as is the custom, by the female relations of his new bride.
It's only when the night is almost over and most of the guests have gone, that he joins his bride.
They sit together. On this, their second meeting, she won't meet his eyes. She must remain downcast and demure. This is how a wife behaves.
From now on, her life is in his hands
Reporter: What do you hope for?
Farzana: I wish I can have a very happy married life, it will be understanding, and we can share our happiness and sorrow, and that's all.. and he should love me very much.
She's the perfect bride..Weak fragile and utterly helpless.
Bride being fed She musn't talk or even feed herself..she has to appear totally dependent.
All her life she's belonged to her father..but from this day on she's no longer a member of her own family. Now she belongs to her husband-to-be, a man she met only two days before.
FARZANA:I'm just going from this house. Marriage means I'm finishing this life and I'm starting a new life. I used to stay with my parents all these years, but now I have to stay with my husband.
The golden bracelet symbolises what they call her bondage of love.. and bondage is the word that best describes the lives of women in Bangladesh, starting from the day they're born
For most girls life begins in a dirt-floored, thatched-roof hut in a poor rural village.
In the village of Belabo, the Nurul family has a new baby girl. She's three months old,and her name is 'Happy'
Reorter: Why did you call your baby Happy?
Mother: I like the sound of it, and I want her to be happy in life. It's good to put makeup on girls, so they'll look beautiful and people will love them.
But for Happy and her sister Polly, it'll be a struggle just staying alive. Many children die before the age of five.. and mortality is higher among girls. Most families prefer a boy. So girls get less food, less medication and less care.
From adolescence and for the rest of their lives they're virtually confined to the house. As custom and the state religion Islam dictate.
Happy's mother never went to school.. Like most villagers, she doesn't know her age - about 25 she thinks. She's had six children, four of whom died.. She's lucky to have lived herself. Almost half the deaths among women her age occur in maternity. But she must keep on trying until she gives her husband a son.
Husband: It's a problem. If God doesn't give me a son there's nothing I can do. It's very important to have a son. The girls will get married and leave this house. We need a son to stay in this house after we're gone
The village's conservative customs will rule every aspect of each girl's life. They'll marry on average at the age of eleven and a half, bear children in their early teens and probably never learn to read and write.
And life will end in a mud-floored thatched roof hut, just as it began
An incident last year in a village much like this one provided a terrible illustration of the plight of women in Bangladesh . An 18 year old woman who'd divorced and remarried was accused of adultery by a local religious leader, and found guilty by the village's Islamic court. It later turned out she was innocent, but by then it was too late. A Fatwah - or Islamic order - was issued against her, declaring that she must be stoned.
The woman was buried in the ground up to her waist, and 101 stones were hurled at her. The stoning didn't kill her, but the shame was so great she went home and drank insecticide and killed herself. The men responsible were ultimately jailed, and the stoning has become the focus of a national campaign for women's rights in Bangladesh
At the forefront of the fight is Taslima Nasreen, a feminist and author who outrages Bangladesh's establishment with her radical views. Tasleema writes a regular newspaper feature that she calls the 'Rotten Column'
Taslima Nasreen:I write several columns each week . The 'rotten column' is one of them. I call it this because women in this society are seen as rotten. If we talk about progress, if we try to break the unjust rules and regulations of the society, if we try to obtain human dignity and speak out against discrimination, then we are considered rotten. If a woman wants to be a sane and civilised human being, she must first be rotten in the eyes of this society.
Taslima writes about equality and sexuality, and rails against Islam. She breaks all of her society's strictest taboos. Her books are best-sellers, but she's paid the price. Late last year an obscure fundamentalist group declared a fatwah, ordering that she be put to death.
Taslima Nasreen: There were 20 or 25,000 people chanting 'Taslima Nasreen should be hanged.' They demanded the death sentence. They had the same things written on banners. they said 'Taslima is against the religion, she should be killed and all her books banned.
Reporter: Are you attacking Islam?
Taslima: Yes directly
Reporter: That must be a very brave or foolish thing to do in this country?
Taslima: I think it is not foolish work. Our religion doesn't give women any human dignity. Women are considered slaves. It's said woman was made from the rib of man. I write against the religion because if women want to live like human beings, they will have to live outside the religion and Islamic law.
Taslima now lives her life in virtual hiding and under guard. The government regards her as an embarrassment, and prohibits foreign journalists from meeting her. We had to interview her in secret in a Dhaka hotel.
Taslima Nasreen I cannot lead a normal life.
Taslima: I can't go out, I can't be seen in public. The government has done nothing. The government uses Islam politically. They think if they say anything against the fundamentalists they won't be able to stay in power and so they remain silent, and take no action.
Not long after our interview, a warrant was issued by the Dhaka police for Taslima's arrest.. She's charged with outraging religious feeling.. If she's found guilty, she faces two years hard labour in jail.
In a back street of the capital, the Bangladesh women's council carries on the fight. Mainstream feminists like Ayesha Khanam blame not Islam but poverty and lack of education for the plight of women.Bangladesh has a range of laws supposed to protect women.. But as most women can't read, they don't even know they exist.
Ayesha Khanam: When a woman is very poor and dependent on her husband.. a woman who is not literate, educated and conscious enough, she cannot stand. The whole society, the attitude of the society is not in favour of her.
Reporter: What is the attitude to women in this country?
Ayesha: Always society thinks that she is a woman, they never try to think she is first human being, then she is a woman. And they are regarded as the possessions of man. Yes, of course, they think it is their property, yes of course.
Upstairs the women's council keeps a refuge for destitute women and girls.. Rejected by their families and their society, usually through no fault of their own.
Nurjahan has lived here for 8 years.. she was rescued after being kidnapped from her family and forced into marriage - when she was nine years old.
Nurjahan: My father used to do business with this man, and they had a disagreement. They became enemies, so this man kidnapped me and forced me to marry him.
Reporter: How old was the man who kidnapped you?
Nurjahan: I'm not sure, about 30 or 35.
Reporter: And how old were you?
Nurjuran: I was nine.
The women's council helped Nurjahan's family take the man to court and get her back.. But the shame was too powerful to allow her to return home.
Nurjahan: I couldn't go back to my home. After what happened to me it would be shameful to go back
Reporter: Do you think you're blamed for what happened?
Nurjuran: Yes, my family is ashamed of me. And I'm ashamed of myself.
Rokeya - abandoned by her husband and rejected by her family -now has a girl of her own and is determined to give her a better life.
Rokeya: I'll send her to school and try to give her a good life. Education is the most important thing. Without education life has no meaning.
Bangladesh is in the unique position of having a woman as Prime Minister and opposition leader. But the reality is that like Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, both women hold their positions only because they're the wife or daughter of a revered male leader from the country's political past. And they face a daunting battle overcoming the powerful social and religious customs that keep their countrywomen among the most oppressed in the world.
The miserable status of women is a major embarrassment for Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia. The reality simply doesn't fit with her government's determined policy to modernise Bangladesh.
PM Begum Khaleda Zia: Women in Bangladesh enjoy equal rights. There is no discrimination between women and men.
Reporter: With respect PM how can you say women are equal when all the statistics indicate women are among the worst off in the world?
PM: Yes as I said before we had these problems in the past, but now there is no discrimination. Males and females are equal.
Sheikh Hasina (Opposition leader): This is a slogan, it's not the reality.
...The opposition leader Sheikh Hasina begs to differ...
Sheikh Hasina: Every day there's at least one report of a woman being killed or attacked for failing to provide a dowry. They're beaten up and tortured. Women are punished in village courts in violation of the law. They're even stoned. How then can we say that women in this country have equal rights?
The Prime Minister, when pressed, has to agree there's much work to be done.
PM Begum Khaleda Zia: My government has given major emphasis to women. Educating women is our highest priority. They make up half the population. We have to educate women to develop our country.
The government has made education the key to its policy on women. And it’s come up with an ingenious way of making parents keep their girls at school - free wheat.
Under the new food for education program, poor rural families get a monthly wheat ration, in return for keeping their children at school.
Man: It's good because we are poor. Before we couldn't send the children to school, because we couldn't afford books and pens and paper and clothes.
Kafil's son and daughter now attend classes each day. In the villages where the program is being trialed, the government says school attendance is up by as much as 40% especially among girls. They've had to find new classrooms to fit them all in.
But food for education is costing the government nearly 40 million dollars in its first year.
The real task will be persuading her parents to leave young Rokeya in school when the free wheat runs out.
Reporter: How long do you want them to stay at school?
Father: I'll send him to school until he gets his masters degree, if I can afford it. As long as it takes.
Reporter: And the girl?
Father: After she turns twelve she'll get married. She'll be an adult then, how can I keep her at school? I'll have to get her married.
In the capital Dhaka, education is seen as the key to improving the lot of women in Bangladesh. But Dhaka is a long way from the impoverished, illiterate rural areas where 85% of the country's women live. Out here in the countryside programs to educate women have faced hostile opposition from some powerful local religious leaders, who claim that sending girls to school is unislamic because they should be at home.
Two out of three children in Bangladesh never even finish primary school and the drop-out rate is twice as high for girls as it is for boys. Literacy among females is 18%.
In village schools like this one classes are irregular. The teachers don't get paid, so they seldom turn up. Beyond puberty, girls are expected to be kept apart from boys.
Religious teacher. Before adolescence boys and girls can mix freely, but after that girls can only mix with males in their family, like brothers and cousins. We consider free mixing bad, both from a religious and social point of view.
Local Islamic leaders like teacher Abdul Rashid determine the ways of village life. When it comes to school, these teachers say there's only so much girls need to know.
Abdul Rashid: Most of the girls will live their life within the family, so they need to learn enough to run a family. They need to be able to keep the family accounts, and give basic education to the children, and look after the family
Yunus: This is a slum area, that you can see, there are a lot of women, capable women.
But just when a story starts getting depressing, you meet somebody like professor Mohammed Yunus. The Professor seems more revolutionary than banker, but a banker he is. His is no ordinary bank.
Professor Mohammed Yunus: When I told this to the manager he fell from the sky, he couldn't believe I was suggesting he lend money to the poorest people. He said banks cannot lend money to the poor.
Professor Yunus believes the key for women is financial independence. And so he set up the Grameen Bank. Which lends only to poor people, and almost exclusively to women.
Professor Yunus:She's telling me that she started this business when she first got the loan, and she's improved her life. She's paid back the first loan and she took a second loan and she says I'm doing fine.
Woman: No one ever lent money to me before. I never thought it was possible, until I got this money.
She shows us her shack For Amena, money means having a tin roof instead of thatch, and more importantly having the power to change her life.
Woman:At first I was worried about what to do with the money and whether I could pay it back, then I realised I could. Next time I'll borrow more, and do even more with it.
Professor Mohammed Yunus: Many of the women we lend to, it's the first time they've touched money in their life, and they'll be in tears holding that money.
Professor Yunus's bank now lends out more than 50 million dollars a month, almost all of its 2 million customers are poor, rural women. The repayment rate is higher than for a conventional bank.
Professor Mohammed Yunus: Giving money brings power to women.
One of the worst things about poverty and being a woman in a poor country is you don't have personal dignity, personal esteem, self-confidence, you know you are somebody, so out of being nobody you become somebody and that's a tremendous change.
But change is coming slowly.
It's now the night of the wedding. Farzana waits, alone and on display.
The celebrations go on without her.
Upstairs in a separate room, the jubilant groom enjoys a feast fit for a king. He's waited on, as is the custom, by the female relations of his new bride.
It's only when the night is almost over and most of the guests have gone, that he joins his bride.
They sit together. On this, their second meeting, she won't meet his eyes. She must remain downcast and demure. This is how a wife behaves.
From now on, her life is in his hands
Reporter: What do you hope for?
Farzana: I wish I can have a very happy married life, it will be understanding, and we can share our happiness and sorrow, and that's all.. and he should love me very much.