By Steve Bradshaw
Executive Producer, Life on the Edge
A glum-looking Rupert Murdoch is in the running for portrait prize ...
Living in fear ...
Invisible crisis ... />Twenty-two-year-old Leyla is about to celebrate her daughter Menal's first birthday.
She will have to decide whether the celebrations should also include Menal's circumcision.
Although her family are taking it calmly, Leyla's actually wondering whether to call it off.
Leyla has only had two children. Amina, who is 35, has had six. Now she is pregnant again and has to decide whether to have her seventh at home.
The alternative, as Amina sees it, is to take a big risk and trust a new local hospital.
For Howa, it is an easier decision but still not as simple as you would think.
She is being offered a hectare of land in a government scheme supported by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development.
The land would help Howa feed her four children, who she is bringing up on her own.
The trouble is that local custom dictates women should not plough the land and, without ploughing, it is hard to see how she would have any crops.
Leyla, Amina and Howa live in Eritrea's Gash Barka - a vast drought-prone region and a rarely filmed corner of the Horn of Africa.
Our three sisters do not know each other, but they do have a friend in common - Belainesh Seyoum, of the National Union of Eritrean Women.
Belainesh fought against Ethiopia in Eritrea's war for independence, enlisting after her best friend was killed.
Belainesh and our three sisters are living in a country where women helped win the war and one in three soldiers were female.
Tricky choices
Now, helped by changes in the constitution, they can make a stand for their own rights. But it is not that easy - they will have to take on neighbours, family, whole centuries of tradition.
And it is not always clear to Leyla, Amina or Howa how to unravel this dilemma.
As Leyla says: "If a girl is circumcised...she can marry, she can get a husband".
But at a Women's Union workshop, attended by her father, Leyla hears that female circumcision has been outlawed, and is not dictated by religious texts.
At a family lunch afterwards there is discussion on the matter, but that is all.
"It was important that my father and relatives were there," Leyla says.
"If they were to continue to attend such meetings, I'm sure their attitudes would be changed. As for me, I can't say. I can't make up my mind in just three hours."
Meanwhile, Amina is still considering about where to have her baby.
"I gave birth to all my children in this bed. All six were born here. I've never gone to a hospital and I've never had any problems," she says.
Home births are dangerous and infant mortality rates are high here. With the help of medically trained midwives, the government has been trying to lure people to hospitals.
But, prompted by Belainesh, Amina reveals another reason for preferring a home birth.
She would be able to enlist the local traditional birth attendants.
And they could be trusted to reconstitute the restrictive "stitching" performed during some kinds of circumcision here.
But she says: "If I go to hospital, they will unstitch me. But after the birth they refuse to do the re-stitching".
Berhana Haite, from Eritrea's Ministry of Health, warns strongly against practices like re-stitching.
"Infection can happen... bleeding can happen. It's really a lifelong suffering," she says.
Local doctors echo this warning but Amina remains unconvinced.
A new front-line
As for Howa, she does have the chance to work her land. The government scheme includes a loan to help her pay a man to plough it for her.
But she is still aware that this goes against the norm.
"People here believe a woman should not go out and leave small children behind," she explains.
"I have to support my family, which is why I go to the market every Tuesday, to sell tea - even so, my neighbours gossip."
As Leyla, Amina and Howa have found, tradition and peer pressure are tough constraints.
But they are strong-minded young women and there is a sense history is on their side.
During the war, women from traditional backgrounds were among those who fought on the front-line.
"There was no distinction between men and women," says Belainesh.
"So we used to work together in the kitchen, and we used to fight the enemy together."
But the problem now is that there is no enemy, only tough dilemmas and tricky choices.
How does Belainesh think our three sisters will decide?
"Leyla, I believe she will not circumcise her daughter. And Amina... maybe 65% she will deliver in the health centre. Howa - she has cultural pressure - but she will break away because she has to come out of poverty to send her children to school."
"Traditional attitudes do not change within a day or a month or a year," she says. "It needs a lot of time to change in order to transform women to a better life."
Life on the Edge is broadcast on BBC World News on Tuesdays at 1930 GMT. The films were made for the BBC by TVE.
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