No 'real change' for Afghan women (BBC)

[Eugene]

Last Updated: Tuesday, 31 October 2006, 01:44 GMT

No 'real change' for Afghan women

By Pam O'Toole
BBC News

An international women's rights group says guarantees given to Afghan women
after the fall of the Taleban in 2001 have not translated into real change.

Womankind Worldwide says millions of Afghan women and girls continue to face
systematic discrimination and violence in their households and communities.

The report admits that there have been some legal, civil and constitutional
gains for Afghan women.

But serious challenges remain and need to be addressed urgently, it states.

These include challenges to women's safety, realisation of civil and political
rights and status.

-snip-

Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6100842.stm

[izzie]

1. I do not think you people have lived long enough yet.

Things change slow. Look at Congress and recall half the pop. is female. Even with laws 50 years old look at the general make up of Japan. It takes years and years to change base thinking and how you do things.

[Igel]

2. The only way to alter things quickly requires a cure that's

every bit as bad as the disease.

Monitoring families and communities, even in their homes, to ensure that men are treating women properly; censoring and reprimanding clerics, dictating what they must and may not say, in order to guarantee and propagate the governmentally-imposed behavioral standards; ensuring that schooling is mandatory and that only the preferred cultural and social norms are instilled in the kids, and that they practice them on the playground to make sure that they're abiding by newly imposed cultural and religious norms. This is despotism, Taliban-style despotism, even if the values are different.

As with domestic violence in the West, the problem is three-fold. You must state what the new standards for morality are and how they will be enforced through the law; you must get men (and women) to agree to abide by them; you must get women (and men) who are living with abusers to be willing to choose their own safety and support for the new public morality over their spouses or parents (or children).

Notice that last bit. One must choose the outside- and state-imposed morality over one's own family. Even if your own well-being is at stake, that's hard for many in a liberal society in which the family is frequently a disposible commodity. In a traditional society where family is more important than clan, which in turn is more important than tribe, which is more important than state ... good luck.

The best that can happen is that circumstances are created in which individual families can seek greater liberty and the government can protect them. Even that's a hard call in a society where pretty much everybody agrees repression is the way to go. (Consider the sex-assault "incident" in Cairo earlier this week, with police doing nothing: Happy Eid!)