Women’s rights champion of Bangladesh featured in film
June 26, 2012: Angela Gomes, a prominent advocate for women’s rights in Bangladesh
for nearly four decades, is the subject of a new film The Guiding Light, which screened
in Dhaka on Monday. Through her organization Banchte Shekha (“Learn how to survive”)
Gomes has offered support to poor, rural women with micro-credit programs, handicrafts
and skills training, and anti-violence initiatives. The Catholic crusader won the
Magsaysay award in 1999 and four national awards for her outstanding contributions
to society. Based in southwestern Jessore district, Banchte Shekha has 25,000 members
in 40 areas. An estimated 200,000 women have been directly and indirectly helped
by the organization, which Gomes founded in 1981. “Angela Gomes is a living example
in the field of women’s rights and empowerment. She has continued changing lives of
tens of thousands of poor and neglected women. With this film we want to spread her
life and ideals across the country and also in the world,” said Nur-A-Alam, the director.
The film will be shown in each of the country’s 64 districts and in other countries
as well. “For many years Angela Gomes has offered outstanding service to women.
She has been humiliated and falsely accused of defying religious traditions,” said
Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, a parliamentarian. “But I think what she has achieved up to
now stands strong for her great deeds.” Gomes said when she started her work, people
threw waste on her, insulted her during village arbitrations and called her a prostitute.
“During my college studies I found violence against women was widespread. I decided
to change the situation,” Gomes said. In the conservative, patriarchal, Muslim-majority
country, 75 percent of women face domestic violence; 95 percent of women don’t earn
an income.