SOUTH ASIA: Despite inequality, South Asian women hold high office

With the exception of the three nations of Nepal, Bhutan and Iran, Cornell University's Kathryn March, Feminist and Professor of Anthropology, Gender, Sexuality Studies and Public Affairs says, "Every single country there has had its highest political position occupied by a woman, at least once."

The success of women leaders in India, Pakistan and other South Asian countries may be related to their family lineage, March says.

The late Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto, former Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi and the prime minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina, are all connected to powerful men and powerful families, which may have helped push them to leadership roles.

Amna Tariq Shah, an English Literature and linguistics student at Peshawar University, sees similar extremes in Pakistan.

"We have had the first female Muslim prime minister [Bhutto]; the president of our Supreme Court Bar Council is a woman, and so is our speaker of the National Assembly," Shah said. "But on the other hand we have women who are confined to the four walls of their homes by their men."

Part of the disparity is that South Asia women symbolize both a cherished culture and the fear of losing traditional patriarchal controls to modernization, such as marriage.

Amna Khalid Mahmoud, a Pakistani student studying in the U.S., says girls are usually allowed to study as long as their parents cannot find a suitable match for them. She says parents want to marry off their daughters at a young age, from 16-22 in arranged marriages.

"And when she gets married, you're expected to offer a dowry to the family that the girl is getting married into ... Once she's married, she belongs to the other family, Shikha Bhatnagar says. "So that's not a long-term investment, where [as] a boy or son is expected to take care of his parents throughout his life."

However -- with education, more women are branching away from their traditional jobs as garment workers in Bangladesh, brick workers in Pakistan, and farmers in India. Even with new fields opening to them, many families still don't allow a woman to work, except in female-dominated fields like teaching and health care.