A woman’s right to vote . . . inside the Gap
“Out of Sight, Afghan Women Still Register to Vote,” by Carlotta Gall, New York Times, 27 June, p. A1.
Interesting story about how much harder it proves to be to get Afghan women registered to vote than men. Guy registration team pulls into town with 300 households and has everyone signed in within 3 days.
Female registration team pulls in on same day but has a much slower time of it. Why? Women rarely leave home compounds, so unlike the guys who simply assemble as required, the women must be visited by the registration team—household by household. And you just know this registration team is dressed as conservatively as possible, otherwise “they would throw stones at us.”
This door-to-door service is a simple compromise with tradition. In certain ultra-conservative Pashtun regions women simply never leave the house.
But these women will vote, and that’s all that matters for now.
[QUICK NOTE: The Sunday Times had a story about a bus carrying voter registration teams being bombed by the Taliban. Two women on board the bus died. Whichever god you worship, those two women were doing his/her best work.]