While the repression and violence in Afghanistan would be enough to make anyone flee, the conditions facing women are even worse than those facing men:
- Women are totally deprived of the right to education and work;
- No woman can venture out of the house alone and unaccompanied by a prescribed male member of the woman's immediate family;
- No woman can see a male doctor, family planning is outlawed, and women cannot be operated on by a surgical team containing a male member;
- All women's recreational and sporting facilities have been banned, women singers cannot sing in case their female voices "corrupt" males;
- Women cannot wear makeup or cosmetics or brightly coloured garments. Women with painted nails have had fingers cut off;
- Women cannot show their faces in public to male strangers. They can only appear outside their houses clad head to foot in a heavy burqa with a gauze square to shield their face;
- Women do not have the right to raise their voices when talking in public, they cannot laugh aloud;
- Women accused of having sex outside marriage are stoned in public; and
- Beating women for "disciplinary" reasons on the slightest pretext is routine.
[From the web site for Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. Visit their site at <http://www.rawa.org>.]