Some 20 years on, Gomes, 47, runs one of the largest women's rural organizations in Bangladesh. Operating out of a 1.5-hectare training complex in Jessore, Banchte Shekha (meaning Learn To Survive in Bengali) offers female-empowerment programs to more than 25,000 women in nearly 430 villages, benefiting through them an estimated 200,000 family members. Banchte Shekha - founded by Gomes in 1976 - teaches rural women a vast range of income-generating skills, including handicrafts, raising crops, poultry and livestock, fish farming, beekeeping and silk making (from the cocoon to the weaving loom to the printing). It also provides health-awareness programs, maternity care and basic schooling through adult education courses.

Working with their earnings and with financial backing from international aid organizations, Banchte Shekha's members have formed village credit societies, lending money among themselves and providing instant cash in cases of emergencies. And, perhaps most radical of all, the organization trains paralegals - male and female - in Muslim law and associated legal procedures. In some villages, cases such as domestic violence against women, dowry disputes, child support and other gender-related conflicts are deliberated not by the traditional all-male mediation councils, but by arbitration panels including members trained by Banchte Shekha.

Women's rights in Bangladesh are a notion more than a reality, no matter what the Constitution may say about equality before the law. In a society already poor, women are poorer than men. A woman who is widowed, divorced or abandoned by her husband is usually left to fend for herself and her children. If a woman lodges charges of desertion, assault or rape, her fate is routinely decided by men. This is the way it has always been. And millions of women accept that this is the way it will stay. But not Gomes. A Christian in a mainly Muslim country, she recalls how, as a student at a mission school in Jessore, she would accompany one of the nuns on visits to local villages. The women spoke of mistreatment. The nun counseled patience. Gomes says: "I decided to talk to her. I said, If you can't bring any change, if you can't save these women, why do you keep telling them to be submissive? Why don't you help them to protest?'" The activist-to-be was expelled from school for "revolutionary" activities.

Known affectionately as Bara Apa (Eldest Sister), Gomes speaks Arabic and has studied the Koran. But when she was younger, even that was not enough to avoid suspicion about her motives and background. She says: "I rubbed butter oil on my hair to make it gray, but it didn't work. I found my Christian name a great obstacle, so I changed it to Anju, which sounded more Muslim. I identified myself as a married woman whose husband had gone abroad to study. And I invented a son and a daughter." Gradually she won the support of open-minded clerics who understood, as she did, that the Koran was not the source of local practices demeaning to women. For a while, Gomes was given shelter in a Muslim home. "The husband encouraged me to go on with my work," she says. "He assured me of every help and protection. I can't find the words to properly praise the goodness and affection he showed me."

For the past two and a half years, Gomes has been fighting ovarian cancer. She says it has slowed her down and forced her to adapt her work pattern. But she still manages visits to Banchte Shekha villages to check on developments and meet the members she has come to know over the years. She has also had to tussle with official harassment and lawsuits based, she says, on malicious rumors designed to destroy her operation. As a consequence, donations have sometimes slowed. Programs have not been affected, but some staff have not been paid for seven months. "It's a miserable situation," she says. "This is the first time this has happened."

Naming Gomes as the winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the board of trustees cited her role in "helping Bangladeshi women assert their rights to better livelihoods and gender equality, under the law and in everyday life." Informed of the award, Gomes exclaimed: "It's just incredible. I never dreamed of receiving such an honor. I believe this is recognition from God, who has entrusted me with responsibility for the welfare of oppressed women."