- Traditionally, in marriage, men have the ultimate authority on household’s resources, children and the management of the wives’ labour; while women depend on their husbands and other male relatives for access to land.

- Moreover, it is customary for a woman not to claim her share of the family property unless it is given willingly. Women often surrender their right to property in exchange of the right to visit their parental home and seek their brothers’ assistance in case of marital conflicts (15). In general, women in Hindu polygamous marriages enjoy fewer guarantees of male support than their Muslim counterparts (15).

- Dowry is still commonly practiced. Furthermore, dowry prices have been increasing due to the fact that higher caste families compete with each other by rising dowry contributions, thus penalizing lower classes women. Rising dowry prices have also caused a higher incidence of the cases of domestic violence as husbands and their families threaten young women without dowry or married women with small dowries to get additional payments (15).

- The practice of early marriages is also widely used, especially in rural areas (4). Additionally, male children are sent to school more frequently than female children. Parents are more likely to spend on books and education for boys than they are for girls (22).

- The custom of purdah, the system of keeping women off from the sight of men other than their immediate family members, is still practiced among Muslim women. However, this practice does not necessarily seclude them anymore from participating in agricultural and wage labour (15).

- In the matriarchal Garo community, husbands live in the wife’s house and engage in household work. The wife is the owner of all of the property of a household and also acquires ownership of the assets earned by the husband. Children take the name of the mother’s family and are under the responsibility of the mother. 
After the death of the wife, the husband looses the right to stay and should leave the house; however, in practice, this custom is rarely applied. If a husband dies, the wife can claim any unmarried man within the husband’s clan to become her new husband.
Daughters are cared for more due to the fact that they are the ones who stay, while sons leave the home after marriage. As a consequence, literacy is also higher among Garo women.
Due to the fact that women are owners of landed property, often non-tribal men marry Garo girls to access land, in denial of the rule that marriages should take place within the clan.  Eviction and confiscation of property are used as punishment in case of marriages outside the clan and also in case of adultery (4).

- In the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), traditional headmen, with the assistance of village elders known as karbaries, manage and protect small forest, grazing and water commons, through customary laws and practices. At the formal level, the hill district councils and the deputy commissioner’s offices retain supervisory authority (5).

- In the Santal and Garo communities, the village headman still enjoys special dignity. In practice, however, the headman is more a ceremony leader rather than a political one (4).

Personal Laws on matters of inheritance follow the traditional religious norms that have been incorporated into the statutory legal framework at the time of independence. However, some ethnic minority groups may still follow customary inheritance rules.

For instance, in the Garo matriarchal community, the mother is the owner of all the property of a household. After her death, the youngest daughter or any daughter nominated by the mother becomes the heiress and is called Nakma. The heiress and her husband are expected to take care of the aging parents (4).

- Although Article 28[2] of the Constitution grants women equal rights with men “in all spheres of the State and of public life”, it does not extend this principle to the private sphere, where it recognizes and allows for personal laws based on religion and custom to regulate people’s life in relation to inheritance, marriage and divorce. In practice, these traditional rules do not always match with the constitutional provisions on gender equality of rights (15).

- Although, the 1980 Dowry Prohibition Act prohibits the exchange of a dowry upon marriage, the practice is still commonly used. As a matter of fact, women face ulterior discrimination and domestic violence as a consequence of non-payment of dowry (4).

- Despite the Child Marriage Restraint Amendment Ordinance, of 1984 fixed the minimum age for marriage at 18 years for women, in rural areas, girls are being married well below the minimum age of 18 years. The absence of the birth registration practice makes this law hard to enforce particularly in rural areas (4).