Freeway - The Poorest and the most exposed women

The Poorest and the most exposed women

Afghanistan has been occupied by the Talibans for a long time and the women have been enormously vulnerable. According to law the women are not allowed to work or the girls allowed to go to school where the Talibans are in control.

For seven years the situation has been like this, since the fundamentalistic Talibans first came in to power in the southern areas of the country in 1994. According to the UN the situation for women in Afghanistan was the worst in the world even before the Talibans, when the northern alliance ruled the country.

The Talibans represent a strict fundamentalistic interpretation of Islam which considers that women are a temptation that can distract the man and lead him away from Islam. To avoid this the women are shut in the home and deprived of their human rights. Weekdays resemble a prison for those women. If they want to go out they have to wear their "burkha". ( an outfit that covers the whole body, there is just a gap for the eyes), and they have to go with their husband or a very close male relative. In Afghanistan everybody knew that the punishment was hard for just a little mistake. The Talibans were constantly watching. If a woman does not wear their “burkha” she can become stoned. Even the Afghan man suffers from the female "prison situation". But what could they do? They risk prison for just a small protest. They knew that without their presence the women would be even more exposed and vulnerable.

Swedish cleaning lady

I know a woman who was in a country where the Talibans ruled. I call her Maria. Maria was there to work as a cleaning lady. As I told you, women have to be inside the house. So one day the cleaning team were going to wash windows. Maria washed from the inside and a man from the outside. After some minutes she discovered that the window was more dirty than before. Maria wondered what was wrong, and finally she noticed that the man on the outside used floor-polish to wash with. But she couldn’t do anything because she wasn’t allowed to go out and tell him.

Opposition Movement

When women don´t get any education the number of births increase a lot, but Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality in the world. A quater of all children in Afghanistan die before they have had their fifth birthday. The only way out for women without supporting husbands is begging or prostitution. When the bombs from the USA fell in Afghanistan, many help organizations and people who has worked to help women, have been forced to leave the country. This has made the situation for the children even more desperate, because they need their mothers. But there is an opposition movement. It´s named RAWA ( The revolutionary association for women in Afghanistan). RAWA is an independent political organization of women in Afghanistan and Pakistan who are fighting for human rights and social justice in Afghanistan.

Ida Häggkvist