Mrs. Clinton Hears Success Stories From Bangladeshi Women

Hillary Rodham Clinton visited a tiny Hindu village Monday, meeting with women who told her how their lives have changed for the better since they have been able to make their own living.

Moishahati is a Grameen Bank village, one of 35,000 in impoverished Bangladesh where the rural poor can get small loans to make fishnets, keep bees, buy cows, or maybe one day get enough land for a house.

Grameen was started in 1976 by an economics professor, Mohammed Yunus, who decided that the best way to help the landless poor of Bangladesh was to lend them small sums of money to help them earn more on their own. The bank now serves more than 2 million people, with loans averaging little more than $100. About 94% of the borrowers are women.

Mrs. Clinton also visited a rural family planning clinic and a school run by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, the country’s largest volunteer group.

All of this is anathema to some religious fundamentalists, who maintain that Grameen and other voluntary programs that help poor women are anti-Islamic because they encourage women to come out of their homes, deal with men and get involved economically.