Unfortunately, the information was untrue. Abdullah's workers quickly learned that women are consistently responsible for a significant portion of the family's agricultural endeavour. They are in charge of seed preservation and storage, post-harvest rice-processing and grain storage; vegetable and fruit growing; poultry raising and livestock care; food processing and food preservation; manufacturing of household items such as bedding; house maintenance and repairs, and fuel gathering. In short, as an external study in 1975 revealed, rural women in Bangladesh spend more time than men in productive work when the definition includes child raising and food preparation. As Zeidenstein points out, "since 73 percent of the consumption of rural people is food and 14 percent is housing, it should be obvious how integrated women's economic role is." The IRDP Women's Program seeks to incorporate women in the development process. It acts on the premise that a subsistence level activity by women can be raised to a commercial activity if a surplus is produced. The cooperatives, which are individual self-help societies rather than communal efforts, therefore provide credit facilities to help women start projects in which they already have expertise'for example, raising poultry, goats or cows'or provide them with improved varieties of seeds or fruit stock. The credit extended is small, varying between US$15 and US$25, and lent for a period of six months. The women exhibit excellent managerial abilities and are very punctual and regular in repaying their loans. One woman, for example, the wife of a poor labourer and mother of eight, received a loan for Tk300 (about US$l25) to buy a calf. She repaid her loan punctually and took out a second loan which enabled her to buy another. These calves are now milk cows, providing enough milk for her children and a surplus to sell in the market. The cows are also used by her husband to plow a small plot of land which he could not otherwise have cultivated. Her assets have increased tenfold. Since the Women's Program is part of the Bangladesh population project, Abdullah became a respected voice on the international level on both advancement of women and population planning. In 1975 she attended the Population Planning Communications seminar at the East-West Center, Honolulu; the World Congress for International Women's Year in Berlin, and the International Seminar on Population Communication sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The United