Macho society where women can never win

SOMEWHERE in an Albanian village a woman's father gives her future husband a dowry. It includes a single bullet - the man's permission to his son in law to shoot his daughter if she fails as a wife.

Janet Colgan tells this story as an example of the culture of violence against women in Albania. It may be apocryphal, but as co ordinator of a helpline in the capital Tirana she hears real life stories every day.

With funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the charity Health Action Overseas (HAO) set up the service last October. Ms Colgan worked with Women's Aid in Ireland and is responsible for training counsellors in Albania.

Only 13 per cent of the population has access to a telephone line in Europe's poorest country. But the service logged more than 14 cans each day in January.

Speaking to The Irish Times having returned to Ireland for a break, she described Albania as schizophrenic in its attitude to women. "You see the young girls on the street. They're tall and slim with short skirts, platform shoes and big hair. They have attitude and confidence," she says.

"Then we get cans from girls as young as 13 who have been raped. The problem is not the rape, but how will she tell the man she's about to marry that she is not a virgin because if he finds out on their wedding night he might throw her out on to the street.

"We've had requests for surgery to stitch back their hymen. We don't provide that. But there are doctors who do."

Sinead Whyte of HAO spent two years working there. "It's a very patriarchal, macho society," she said. But in the rural villages women do the heavy agriculture work. Women and donkeys do the carrying.

"It is a violent society at all levels. It's in everything Tom the garbage on the streets, to the vagabond dogs, to the guys who drive round in big Mercedes and hassle you at traffic lights."

The helpline received 440 calls in January. "One morning we got three phonecalls from men who had put money into the pyramid scheme and lost everything. Their wives were having breakdowns and they wanted us to send a psychiatrist."

So far none of the callers reporting violence or rape has wanted to go to the police. "The police are not particularly sympathetic," Ms Colgan said. "But to be fair they are the only state body that has asked us for training."

Since the fighting started the phone still rings, but less frequently and rarely in the evening when curfew forces the men to stay at home.

Most of the calls come from women in the city as calls from villages go through the post office. There are calls from women who have been raped and are locked up in their homes because their family is so ashamed of them.

Since December, Ms Colgan's Albanian friends have talked of little else but leaving the country. "Last Wednesday I was in the post office. There was a visa lottery and it was as if the whole of Albania was there posting their visa forms. There's even a special box for them," she said.

In June HAO plans to send four lorries to Albania filled with medical supplies for hospitals and clinics. The country has the highest infant mortality rate in Europe and a large number of women die in childbirth. The project Women at the Wheel plans a benefit concert in the Millstreet arena on May 25th.

Ms Colgan doesn't believe there are the same ethnic divisions as in the former Yugoslavia. "It's more a case of Albania against the world."