Introduction • Home • Studio • Library • Contact
Quest for Justice
|
||
|
Despite significant advances in recent years, Bangladesh remains one of the world's 30 least-developed countries and has a high illiteracy rate. Few, especially among the poor and weak, conceive of the law as a defense; rather they see it as a tool used by officials and the powerful for their own purposes.
Women in particular are at a disadvantage. Their inferior economic and social status in Bangladesh makes them one of the poorest, most 
desperate groups in society, and vulnerable to arbitrary divorce, neglect, and domestic violence. Beating and even murder of women by their husbands and in-laws has been associated with complaints that a woman's dowry (the money or property that a woman brings to her husband in
marriage) is too small; she is disliked by her husband or his kin; her household skills are perceived to be lacking; or even that her skin
is too dark. The environment in court tends to be unwelcoming to women.
After six years of marriage, Baby Akther's (above) has just been divorced by her husband in response to pressure from his family. She and her husband have two children. This was Akther's second marriage. She has three children from her first marriage. Her first husband had a drinking problem and would beat her when he was drunk, she said. One day she ran away from her home, and met the man who would become her second husband. They fell in love and decided to marry. Akther said she and her second husband have had a very good relationship because they married for love. She did not want to accept the divorce. "I don't want dower," she said. "I want my husband, not money." |
||
|
||
|
Outside the District Court in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Tired and confused, a women sits in a stairwell in the District Court Building of Madaripur, Bangladesh