Women Unimpressed With Candidates

With all signs pointing to an eventual win for the incumbent, President Hamed Karzai, in Afghanistan’s elections, groups supporting a greater role for women in Afghan society are not holding out much hope for a radical change in policy.



“Even though the constitution guarantees equal rights for men and women, the main presidential candidates still think in a very patriarchal way,” said Shekiba Talash, a political activist in Balkh province, in northern Afghanistan.



“They have no place for women in their strategy,” she said. “There still is a tradition that women should obey men. Most men in Afghanistan still think like this. Whether they are intellectuals or illiterate, they want to marginalise women, and keep them in a corner, isolated from the rest of society.”



She pointed to Karzai, whose wife, a medical doctor, has been noticeably absent from the public scene.



“Why has [the president] kept his wife at home? She has never appeared as First Lady, even at all-women gatherings,” she said.



In this deeply traditional society, it is almost unheard of for men to appear in public with their wives. None of the candidates has used his or her spouse as an asset in the campaign, something that rankles with activist women.



But Malalai Usmani, head of the Women’s Advocacy Institute in Balkh, considers the Karzai era a golden age for women.



“During Karzai’s administration, women obtained a lot of freedoms,” she said. Karzai became head of the interim government immediately after the fall of the Taleban, when women were just starting to emerge from the crippling isolation of the radical Islamic regime.



“For the first time there was a woman campaigning for president,” she said, referring to Massouda Jalal, a candidate in 2004 who later became the minister for women’s affairs.



“Women went to the parliament. They entered business and became economically independent. They participated in education, culture, sports, and even singing, which is seen as a very big sin. Women broke taboos. They proved they can exercise their rights on an equal basis with men.”



This may be a somewhat rosy assessment. Afghan women still face a host of problems in trying to gain equality under the law. New legislation, for instance, has severely limits women’s freedoms within the home. Women’s groups harshly criticised the president for signing the law, claiming that he was catering to a conservative minority to win support for the elections.



Fawzia Nawabi, the head of the department of support for women’s rights in the Balkh office of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, AIHRC, is not as big a fan of Karzai as her colleague.



“What was done during Karzai’s administration was not the achievement of the Afghan government,” she said. “Instead, we should be thankful to the international community, which was demanding equal rights for men and women. They worked to give women a presence in all aspects of life.”



The Karzai government had a very weak record on women’s rights, she added.



“I, along with 400 women, went to Karzai to share our problems and to present our programmes. We demanded harsh punishment for rapists. But Karzai did not accept our programmes or our demands. As long as Karzai is president, our plans will not be implemented,” continued Nawabi.



“Millions of dollars poured into the country in the name of women. But nothing serious has been done. In fact, the government was unable to spend all of this money, and much of it was wasted.”



Nawabi points to several factors that have combined to keep women from realising their potential: disregard for the law, lack of awareness of their rights among both men and women, and a general culture of misogyny in Afghanistan.



“I have spoken to the main presidential candidates,” she said. “They did not have the right programmes, or a strategy for solving women’s problems. They just made promises in order to attract votes from women, who number half the population. As soon as they get into office, they will forget all of their promises.”



As an example, Nawabi cited Karzai’s pledge to give 30 to 40 per cent of government jobs to women.



“This is all a trick,” she said. “He only has one woman in his cabinet. Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani (the other main candidates) are just the same.”



One of the reasons that women’s issues are not front and centre of this campaign is that other concerns have eclipsed them, say political analysts. Security, negotiations with the Taleban, and other issues have dominated the debate, leaving little room for an already disadvantaged sector of the population.



“It is clear why the main candidates do not have a specific programme for helping women, for freeing them from violence and the deprivation of their rights,” said Yahya Bawari, a writer and analyst in the north.



“They are focusing on the hot topics of the day, the challenges that Afghanistan is facing. In the first elections (in 2004) the main issues were democracy, human rights, women’s place in society, freedom of expression, and the establishment of civil society,” she said.



“But now the only issue is security, so the question of political, social, and economic rights for women has been marginalised.”



Nilofar Sayar, the head of the Institute for Advocacy for Women and Youth, said that she is unhappy with the lack of progress on women’s issues. Like Nawabi, she credits the international community with much of what has been accomplished.



“Even at the Bonn conference (in 2001) the international community forced the Afghan authorities to deal with the issues of women in the cabinet, parliament, and provincial councils,” she said. “The opening of schools was a result of the Bonn agreement, not an achievement by Karzai.”



Sayar sees little reason to expect that the new president will be any different.



“The candidates do not have a proper strategy for solving women’s problems,” she said.



But she does have a radical solution: self-empowerment.



“Women themselves must gather together to defend their rights, and to prove to the patriarchal and misogynistic society that we are half of humanity, that we have equal rights with men,” she said.



“We should also try to gain technological expertise, to prove that we are no weaker than men. Then we will emerge, self-confident. And men also will believe that women can do anything.”



Ahmad Kawush in an IWPR trainee in Balkh province.