women's highlights in FRIDAY HARBOR women's highlights FRIDAY HARBOR

women's highlights in FRIDAY HARBOR

women's highlights FRIDAY HARBOR

women's highlights in FRIDAY HARBOR.Dozens of young women recently gathered in the centre of kabul to demonstrate against a new law.
Following an international outcry, afghan president hamid karzai agreed to review the law.
On sunday, women activists said he had told them he signed it without reading it properly.
The issue highlights not only the divisions in afghan society but challenges western expectations.
Little influence when the taleban were overthrown almost eight years ago it was regarded as a major victory for women.
Under the rule of the islamic fundamentalists, women were effectively barred from education and leaving their homes.
Many in the west thought that the burkhas the islamic garment that covers a woman from head to toe and is regarded by some as a symbol of oppression would come off.
That did not happen.
Yes, there has been progress.
Young girls go to school and women go to university.
Access to health care for women has improved.
Women now work outside their homes.
Some choose to wear the headscarf instead of the burkha.
And on paper at least, women have power.
Because of quotas, a quarter of all members of parliament are female.
But that representation has not translated into power.
She says that women like her are interested in protecting modest gains such as the right to an education and to go to work rather than any westernstyle liberation.
Some women and human rights activists also worry about the constant rumblings of possible reconciliation with the taleban and other antigovernment insurgents to end the conflict.
They feel that their hardwon yet modest freedoms could be washed away.
But this remains a deeply conservative society, where loyalties to religion, family and tribe are dominant.
A group of young female university students i spoke to were angry about the law because it intruded into their personal lives rather than over its actual contents.
By afghan standards, the cities are relatively liberal.
In the villages, it is islam and custom that govern.
None of the women i spoke to attending a pottery class had heard of the new legislation.
All were shrouded from head to toe.
But one of the women told me that she counted herself lucky to be attending the course.
The women protesting against this law were the exception it is men who remain firmly in charge.