“We didn’t even have bridges…”

Photos (top to bottom): BRAC Village Organization Meeting, for microfinance participants (all women); BRAC Primary School Children sit in a semi-circle in their one-room schoolhouse; BRAC students perform; me, BRAC USA staff Rachael, and BRAC intern coordinator Shana in front of what is arguably Dhaka's swankiest bridge.

During tonight’s blackout – these happen nearly every day – I think I’ve successfully persuaded myself that it’s romantic rather than trying to write my blog by the light of a battery-operated lamp, in my small, er, cozy room now without A/C or a fan. It’s not primitive, I tell myself. Quite the contrary: I have this laptop, this bed, this lamp.

Moments earlier, we – myself and the two young maids that work in my home here – were poring over my Bengali-English phrasebook. This little book is our tenuous bridge to understanding, and we’ve already spent several hours practicing a variety of questions and answers, in Bengali, English and sometimes Hindi (turns out ‘namaste’ is not only a word chanted at the end of a yoga session). It occurred to me tonight that my difficulty learning Bengali won’t stymie much except my ability to direct a rickshaw driver here. But without English, well, there are real consequences for these two women.

Anyhow, I digress…sort of. Yesterday, I spent a day “in the field” with BRAC for a baptism-by-fire orientation of sorts. I went to Savar, a suburb made up of a number of villages about an hour from Dhaka. After tea, biscuits and bananas at a BRAC training center, BRAC whisked about 15 interns away in two spotless white mini-vans through narrow streets crowded with people, rickshaws, animals, bicycles, and a car here and there. We walked the last short leg of this journey – shooing away mosquitoes and avoiding muddy puddles from yesterday’s rainfall along the way – and suddenly we were upon a group of about 20 women. And men, and children…it seemed the whole village came to this week’s Village Organization meeting, curious about the arrival of sweaty, wide-eyed Americans.

These women – all married, all wearing bright, colorful saris or salwar kameez (tunics worn over loose-fitting pants – my new favourite clothing ensemble), all eager to be heard – receive loans from BRAC. They participate in the first tier of BRAC’s microfinance program, which means they are very poor but eligible for a small loan to buy a cow, a sewing machine or some other means to earn income. And they’re held accountable as a group – which is in part responsible for BRAC’s 95% repayment rates despite their poverty.

At VO meetings, borrowers report to their Programme Organizer on progress and they make loan repayments. They also help one another out when cash –Taka – is short. Why do they work with BRAC? The interest rates are low, they say. It allows them to make money for their family. We ask: Do their husbands ultimately control the funds they earn? Suddenly all of the women are talking at once, while the men and children observe – their husbands are aware they receive loans, the women say, but they all insist they are the ones who decide how to use the profits.

Bangladesh is a tough place to live. It is unbearably hot (although you wouldn’t guess it by the lack of sweat on Bangladeshi brows), the poverty is deep and widespread, and decades of corruption have led to today’s state of emergency, instituted by the military government over a year ago.

But these women are also tough – I can see it in their tired eyes, their sun-scarred complexion, their strong and sure voices. So I am surprised to see that their Programme Organizer – in essence, their leader – is not another woman, but a young man dressed in a pressed, button-down shirt. Later in the day, I am again surprised to see legions of women working at an Aarong production facility (Aarong is an upscale shop started by BRAC that makes and sells handicrafts, while providing fair employment for Bangladeshis) under the supervision of… men. I asked the BRAC staffer with us about this power imbalance, which was especially striking given BRAC’s mission to empower women and girls. She assured me that women also take on leadership roles, and what we were seeing today was a small sample.

So, on we went – to a human rights and legal assistance meeting (today’s topic: constitutional law, specifically issues of divorce, inheritance, and polygamy), a BRAC nursery (where one of the interns fainted from the heat), a community library.

And then there was the BRAC Primary School. I’ve come to believe that you can tell immediately when a school, or a classroom, is good. This one-room schoolhouse was great. I could see the learning taking place – it was in the artwork that covered all four walls and hung from the ceiling, it was in the dances the children performed for us, it was in the way they answered our questions without hesitation but enthusiasm, and pride.

I’ve read so much about BRAC schools: they serve children who either dropped out or never enrolled in largely sub-par government schools, they enroll 65% girls, they serve 25 to 33 students, the teacher is a married woman from the community, and they have a child-centered approach to learning. And: On average, BRAC children – at more than 37,000 schools in every district in Bangladesh – outperform children in government schools on national exams.

Dr. Abed, the founder of BRAC and hands down the most charismatic individual I have ever met, joked when I saw him tonight that BRAC Schools are like McDonald’s: every one is the same. As promised, at this schoolhouse there were 33 children, exactly two-thirds were girls, and the teacher had a wedding ring. But more than that…these children are confident, they are smart, and they have so much potential. I asked them what they were learning that day. One of the girls jumped up and read to us, in English, a passage on food from today’s coursework. We had to ask the standard question: What do you want to be when you grow up? Boys overwhelmingly wanted careers in the police force or the military (although one wants to be a singer, and he performed for us on the spot), and girls aspired to be pilots, flight attendants, teachers, doctors, and, yes, police.

Though invigorated by this classroom, at the end of the day I was nagged by a question: What happens on a girl’s journey from the classroom to the workplace? Many of these young girls are leaders, they are confident, they have big dreams. Boys and girls in this school jump (literally) to share their ideas and dreams in equal measure. But in the workplace, men are the supervisors, the organizers… women are maids, line workers, recipients.

I raised this question today, this time to the strong, empathetic, smart woman leading BRAC’s innovative new program to reach the “Ultra Poor” in Bangladesh. She assured me BRAC is making strides in achieving gender equity in the workplace. BRAC full-time staff (not including teachers and other part-time employees) are 20 percent women overall, and even 30 percent at headquarters. My expression must have been nonplussed. Twenty percent? Thirty percent? That’s equity?

She went on. You must keep in mind, she told me: Our country is only 37 years old. For the first 10 to 15 years after independence, she said, we were focused almost exclusively on reconstruction and rehabilitation (Bangladesh’s independence immediately followed a cyclone in 1970 that killed 500,000, a Liberation War in 1971 with disputed Bangladeshi casualty figures ranging from 200,000 to 3 million as well as 8 to 10 million refugees, and a famine in 1973-74 that many claim killed over one million people (the government figure is 26,000)).

“I remember, in the mid-80s,” she said. “We didn’t even have bridges.” In a country where rivers and lakes criss-cross land as highways do in the U.S., no bridges is no small challenge. I can’t imagine gender equity was on anyone’s radar.

I’m still parsing out what it all means. But now it’s certainly difficult for me to argue that Bangladesh’s progress on social issues is inadequate, or too slow. All of those women I met yesterday were in the workplace, and were gaining access to loans and income. The maids I practice Bengali with are certainly farther along in their mastery of English than I’ll ever be in their language, and they do have a safe, comfortable place to live and a regular income in a country that’s wracked by poverty. Maybe the women are not the supervisors, maybe the maids are not fluent in English, but maybe they need some time, and resources…

I searched for context. Thirty-seven years after America’s inception, women were still 144 years from the right to vote. Bangladesh certainly has us beat on that count. This developing country has already had two female prime ministers. Admittedly, they are both in prison now, but that’s a story for another day.