Worse for women

September 5, 2001
Issue 
463

BY SARAH STEPHEN

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>.]

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