Echidne has an excellent post on Afghan Women and the upcoming elections. Here’s a sample, but you should read her entire post.
But supposing that some women at least do manage to get to the voting sites, how will they cast their votes? A recent survey shows that 72% of Afghanis believe that men should direct their womenfolks’ voting choices. Given this, it’s unlikely that these women’s votes would somehow recast the political power structure in the country.[…]
In some ways the ability to vote may not matter very much to most Afghan women. Their lives are so affected by tradition, religion and their immediate family members that any distant political changes in Kabul might go completely unnoticed. A country which imprisons a twelve-year old for refusing her father’s decision to marry her off to an old man has a long way to go before it can be called a democracy, whether women vote or not.
Related article: The BBC has an article today surveying the dismal state of women’s rights in Afghanistan, with several anecdotes from women in Afghanistan.
In case any readers are in NYC:
The NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security*
American Jewish World Service
and Women for Afghan Women
Invite You
To a Panel Discussion
Afghanistan:
Women’s Roles in Peacebuilding and Reconstruction
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
12:30-2:00 pm
Church Center for the United Nations, 12th floor
(1st Avenue and 44th Street)
Featuring Guest Speaker
Professor Sakena Yacoobi, Afghan Institute of Learning
Professor Sakena Yacoobi is President and Executive Director of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), an internationally recognized Afghan women’s non-governmental organization. AIL provides teacher training, health services and education to women and children. Professor Yacoobi and AIL jointly received the 2004 Women’s Rights Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation for furthering the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. She is co-founder and Vice-President of Creating Hope International, a U.S. non-profit organization.
*The NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security was formed in May 2000 to call for a Security Council resolution on women, peace and security. Following the adoption of resolution 1325 in October 2000, the group now focuses on working towards 1325’s full implementation. The working group includes: Femmes Africa Solidarité, Hague Appeal for Peace, International Alert, International Women’s Tribune Centre, Women’s Action for New Directions, the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, the Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, Women’s Environment and Development Organization, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. peacewomen.org
Thanks for the link, Ampersand. Afghan women deserve the world’s attention.
From The Boston Globe“Protests lose force day after Afghan election”
“I think they [the other candidates] saw how many people were voting for Karzai, and they got scared, so they decided to say the election was not fair,” said Seelay Srek, 22, an observer working at a women’s polling station.
She said she had been elated to watch Afghan women vote for the first time, and went home relieved that there had been little violence — only to grow angry at the emphasis on the ink mistake.
“The ink is not important compared to millions of people’s votes,” she said. […]
Srek, the Afghan journalist who acted as a poll observer in Kabul, said she was most excited when she saw an old woman arrive enthusiastically at the polls despite a pronounced limp. “It made me happy,” she said.
Another woman, she said, told her she planned to vote for Karzai against the wishes of her husband.
“When I go home, I’ll tell him I voted for the guy he wanted,” she confided.
Cox and Forcum has a great cartoon about this.
Oops, Forkum…sorry Allen.
The silence on this issue is deafening. This is absolutely the most significant advance for women’s rights in our generation, yet nothing from the overtly vocal peanut gallery here. Shame on all of you (except Echidne and Amp). If Bill Clinton freed these women you’d all be falling over yourselves, and you know it. Disgusting partisanship.
Phi: what, exactly, are you going on about?
y’know, i organized bringing Women For Afghan Women to my home town. i’ve also made sure their book, as well as others about Afghan women, get into people’s hands. but, y’know, it didn’t occur to me to post about it here or to put it on my website… sorry ’bout that.
Jam,
I think you know exactly what I’m “going on about”. And, obviously, those who recognize the impact of free elections in Afghanistan for women’s rights (like you) are exempt from my criticism.
Maybe I was being too harsh. I mean, how can I be angry at the silence of this forum, when the Now organization, which in an “Action Alert” on the plight of Afghan women in 2001 said:
“when the Taliban took over the capital city of Kabul in September 1996, it issued an edict that stripped women and girls of their rights, holding the Afghan people hostage under a brutal system of gender apartheid. . . . Women were prohibited from being seen or heard. The windows of their homes were painted, and they could not appear in public unless wearing the full-body covering, the burqa. Women were beaten for showing a bit of ankle or wearing noisy shoes.”
The NOW “Issues” page headed “Women in Afghanistan” hasn’t been updated for two-and-a-half years. And there is no mention of the Afghan election on the main pages of the NOW website.
Is freedom good or bad depending on who delivers it? Seems so.
Source “Real Women’s Liberation”, by Katherine Mangu-Ward
The women rights question in Afghanistan has to be closely linked with education in that country. The society and its habbts has to be changed before anyone there starts to take these issues seriously.