Women's Leadership

In order to pressurise the Taliban to allow space for women in the Ministry of Women's Affairs, hundreds of female protestors took to the streets in Afghan national capital, Kabul, on Monday. According to a report by Tolo News, the women who took part in the protest raised slogans against the oppressive rule and demanded active participation of women in every field, including politics.

Gul Bano* and Karima* are activists who ran provincial branches of the ministry of women’s affairs in two different parts of Afghanistan. Their former offices have been taken over by the Taliban’s feared enforcers, the ministry for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice.

They are now in hiding, afraid of the men they helped put in prison for domestic violence and other abuses, many of them in the Taliban or with family links to the militants.

Just before Christmas, a government report highlighted that over half of the Irish population believes the most important role for a woman is to take care of her home and family. The most important role for a man, according to a significant proportion of the population (almost 40%), is to earn money.

Domestic responsibilities and social constructs are the biggest hurdles to improving women's participation in politics, a researcher at the University of Indonesia's Politics Review Center (Puskapol UI), Beni Telaumbanua, has said.

"Women encounter a domestic challenge in the form of their responsibility as a wife or a mother," he noted at a webinar on 'Ensuring Women's Participation in the General Election', streamed live on YouTube here on Tuesday.