Rasia was 12 years old. She lived in a small village in rural Bangladesh. One evening, she was walking home after visiting her grandmother when five young men waylaid her. They dragged her into the bushes and raped her repeatedly. Then, because they did not want her to identify them, they gouged her eyes out and left her out there to bleed to death. The whole night she lay there, in pain and fear. In the morning some villagers found her, still alive. They took her to hospital, where she died.

On any given day, the newspapers in Dhaka carry such horrific stories of women violated by men in the most dreadful ways – children raped, young girls scarred for life by acid, wives burnt to death with petrol. There seems to be no limit to men’s brutality and inhumanity to women.

In Bangladesh, the problems faced by women are enormous for religious and cultural reasons. They are disadvantaged from birth, given less to eat than their brothers, denied an education, married off at an early age for dowry and treated as chattels by husbands and mothers-in-law. With no support system from legislators, law enforcers or the justice system, they have to bear their burdens silently and painfully.

Improvement to the lives of the women in Bangladesh can come about only with a drastic change in the attitude of society, of men, and of women themselves.

Disturbed by the lack of progress in addressing these issues, a local women’s volunteer organization called Naripokkho decided to undertake a pilot study on Violence Against Women to conduct a national survey and to find out what institutional reforms were required.

There are three million women less than there should be in Bangladesh because of gender-based violence   63% of violence-related injuries occur in the home   Girls aged 11 to 15 are most vulnerable to violence including abduction, rape, trafficking and acid attacks   60% of married women in Dhaka city reported being hit by their husbands

The research was coordinated by Safia Azim, a member of Naripokkho and a lecturer in psychology at Dhaka University.

The study found that most violence against women was perpetrated by close family, other relatives and friends. This finding led to another study on Domestic Violence with the involvement of ICDDR,B. The second survey has been completed but Naripokkho is awaiting government clearance between the findings can be disseminated.

The pilot study was conducted by examining newspaper reports, interviews, visiting police stations, hospitals and courts, as well as a random household survey in Dhaka. In the four main newspapers, 87 cases of violence against women were reported monthly in the form of (1) rape, (2) murder, (3) abduction, (4) suicide, (5) acid burning, (6) battering for dowry, (7) burning with fire, (8) abandonment, (9) trafficking and (10) threats.

Other cases included gouging eyes, 101 lashes, stabbing and strangulation. The majority of cases involved young women from 11 to 20 years.

In police stations, most complaints were made in cases of (1) abductions, (2) rape, (3) torture for dowry, (4) trafficking, (5) missing women, (6) murder, (7) abandonment and (8) acid burn.

In the hospital, the injuries were related to (1) battering, (2) rape, (3) acid burn, (4) fire burn, (6) stabbing and (7) poisoning.

From the courts, the survey found that cases were similar to those seen in police stations. In the majority of cases, the perpetrators were men including acquaintances, lovers or suitors, family members and relatives.

As the study pointed out, notions such as "a woman’s heaven lies under the feet of her husband" and "the part of a woman’s body that is hit by her husband will go straight to heaven" have given the men of Bangladesh the prerogative to use violence against their wives and thus violence against a wife is common male behaviour in Bangladeshi culture.

The study found that "interventions of violence have to be designed at different levels. At the individual level, women need to feel accepted and not stigmatized. They may need medical care, legal aid and mental health counseling. At the community level, there is a need for shelters, facilities for child care, education and training opportunities, credit, housing facilities as well as employment opportunities. At the state level, women need equal rights, women sensitive health and law enforcing policies, judicial procedures, methods of investigation and an assurance of justice. Men have to be made aware and involved at all levels of interventions against violence against women otherwise women’s human right to live a life free from violence will not be actualised."