Khaleda Zia, who has died at the age of 80, was Bangladesh's first female prime minister.
Her husband, Ziaur Rahman, a leading figure in the country's struggle for independence, was president in 1977. At the time, Ms. Zia was described as a shy housewife devoted to their two sons.
But following her husband's assassination in 1981, she rose to lead his Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and served two terms as prime minister - first in the 1990s and then in the early 2000s.
In the brutal world of Bangladeshi politics, she was accused of corruption and spent years in prison - but the charges were dropped after a 2024 uprising that saw her long-time rival, Sheikh Hasina, swept from power.
Begum Khaleda Zia was born in West Bengal in 1945. The daughter of a tea trader, she moved to what is now Bangladesh with her family after the partition of India. At the age of 15, she married Ziaur Rahman - then a young army officer.
In 1971, he joined a mutiny against West Pakistani forces and declared independence for Bangladesh. After the military seized power in 1977, Rahman - now the army chief of staff - declared himself president. He reintroduced political parties and a free media, endorsed by popular vote. He faced numerous military coups and dealt with them brutally.
Until then, Khaleda Zia had kept a low profile and seemed to take little interest in public life. But she became a member of the BNP and rose to become its vice chairman.
In 1991, Khaleda Zia and the BNP became the largest party in post-military elections, and she was sworn in as prime minister.
Having absorbed most of the powers of the old presidency, she was the first female leader of Bangladesh and only the second woman to lead a Muslim country. With Bangladeshi children receiving only two years of education on average, she made primary school free and mandatory for all.
In 2001, Ms. Zia had her revenge, having formed an alliance with a group of Islamist parties. Together, they won nearly two-thirds of the seats in parliament. During her second term, she introduced a constitutional amendment to reserve 45 seats in the legislature for female MPs, working to educate young women in a country where 70% of them were illiterate.
As her health began to deteriorate, including severe arthritis and diabetes, Ms. Zia faced a series of legal challenges culminating in her imprisonment for corruption in 2018, after which she maintained her innocence, claiming political motivations behind the charges.
Her passing marks the end of a long political journey that profoundly impacted Bangladesh's history, leaving a legacy intertwined with her resilience against adversity in a patriarchal society.
