By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Sep 27 2004 (IPS)

For Habiba Sarabi, Afghanistan’s minister of women’s affairs, the quest to secure women’s rights in her country remains a daunting task and it begins with fundamentals such as the expression of ”gender equality.”

”The words, the idea, are still not common in Afghanistan,” Sarabi said in an interview during a recent visit to Thailand. ”Many people do not know what gender equality means.”

She considers this lapse another indicator of how women in her battle- scarred country were deprived of education and knowledge about equal rights. ”This is clearly felt when you go to the provinces and rural areas, where most women are forced to follow fanatical ideas, customs and traditions,” she adds.

In cities like Kabul, however, she admits, the notion of male and female equality has gained a slight foothold. ”Particularly among the educated people who know of men and women having equal rights,” she points out.

Such a reality has not dissuaded a courageous Afghan woman, Dr. Massouda Jalal, from campaigning as a candidate in the country’s first presidential election due on Oct.9.

Jalal is the only woman among the 18 male candidates for the poll, including Hamid Karzai, the interim president. At 41 years, she is also the youngest contestant to seek the endorsement of the estimated seven million registered voters, of which some 40 percent are women.

According to Sarabi, presidential contender Jalal will find it difficult to break the mould that controls the Afghan mind towards women. ”The society is not ready for a female candidate because Afghanistan is completely dominated by men,” she said.

Yet the very presence of Jalal on the ballot for the October elections is viewed as one of many growing signs in Afghanistan that women are trying to assert themselves as significant players to help rebuild the country devastated by over two decades of war.

Early this year, another Afghan woman demonstrated the challenge women are prepared to mount against a culture where men rule. During a constitutional loya jirga (grand council), Malalai Joya delivered a speech where she denounced the brutality and criminal acts of the country’s tribal warlords, the mujahideens.

And among the other areas where the hints of change are increasingly visible are in government, the economy, in the education system and non- governmental organisations.

”There is more space opening up within governance for women to be involved and there is a lot of advocacy for women’s rights,” Chandni Joshi, regional director for South Asia at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), told IPS.

The women are participating in trade fairs, even in India, to confirm their passion to be entrepreneurs, she added. ”There is a sense of relief among women that they are heading somewhere.”

Yet Joshi cautions against a dramatic sea change overnight in South Asia, including Afghanistan, since ”the women have been hit so hard; we have to give them more time to change.”

None conveys this better than the continuing lack of mobility for women.

”They still have to be escorted by male family members,” said the UNIFEM regional director.

That restriction is one of the legacies imposed on Afghanistan’s women by the deposed Taliban regime and the archly conservative Muslim tribal leaders who fought for control of this southern Asian country before the Taliban came to power in 1996.

Another legacy of rights being denied is mirrored in women’s life expectancy – 44 years, one of the worst in the world, according to public health reports.

That Afghan males were expected, on average, to live till 45 years as a result of the conflict also affirms the scale of ‘gender apartheid’ that prevails. It means that Afghan women are not outliving their men, which is the pattern globally.

”Unfortunately, we also have the world’s second highest maternal mortality rate, which is 1,600 deaths per 100,000 live births,” said Sarabi, the minister. ”That is an enormous number.”

She does not expect that to change swiftly, since basic reproductive health services are only available in ”17 percent of health facilities in the country.”

Afghanistan’s literacy rate also mirrors the discrimination women endure, since only 13 percent of them were deemed literate as opposed to 33 percent of the men by the time the Taliban were driven out.

According to the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an independent group of Afghan women fighting for women’s rights, the Taliban’s fundamentalist Islamic ideology had forced women out of schools, banned them from working and even deprived them from laughing loudly.

Women were whipped in public if they exposed their ankles and beaten and verbally abused if ”not clothed in accordance with Taliban rules,” states RAWA.

Afghanistan’s reputation as having the most landmines after Cambodia also left a mark among Afghanistan’s women, since they and their children were the main victims of landmine explosions, according to humanitarian agencies.

The war, according to Sarabi, ”gave us some one million widows.”

And it is her mission, says Sarabi, to help the women of her country secure an environment that protects them and respects their rights. ”We are moving forward slowly, but keeping in mind Afghanistan’s customs and traditions.”

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