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Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Will Afghani Women Ever Have Equal Rights Like the World's Women?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

Women of the USA have only had the right to vote for the past 100 years.  It was on August 20, 1920, that they won this right after a lot of leg-work.  It meant that the 19th amendment was ratified to the Constitution giving women citizenship and the right to vote!  The first conference addressing the US women's suffrage movement was the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.  It took 72 years to bring it to fruition.  

 It took a Civil War to give Black men and women the right to vote which happened April 12, 1861 – April 9, 1865. Most black men in the United States did not gain the right to vote until after the American Civil War. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified to prohibit states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude."  Even that wasn't enough to encourage every State to allow them to vote; depending on whether or not they could read, and what books, etc, stipulations that could keep them from voting rights. it wasn't till the 1960s and President Kennedy and his brother, Robert, that Blacks started to be given rights.             

Voting rights activist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa) of the Yankton Sioux Nation was prominent in the women's suffrage community.ETTMANN ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES

In 1920, Native Americans weren’t allowed to be United States citizens, so the federal amendment did not give them the right to vote. Yet, the first generation of white suffragists had studied Native communities to learn from a model of government that included women as equal democratic actors. Many of their own native society gave women strong governmental rights, especially some tribes of the East Coast.   

                                               

Asian American immigrant women were  excluded from voting until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 allowed them to gain citizenship more than three decades after the 19th Amendment. Despite being barred from citizenship and from voting, Asian American suffragists such as Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee worked alongside white Native-born women in the years leading up to 1920;

The British colonies in North America were among the historical settings in which many Jews could not vote because they were Jews.  Yet elders of Eretz Yisrael, in days before Israel was created, had Judges, and women had the opportunity to be just that.  Such women as Deborah was a judge and a prophet as well.  Mirium, the sister of Moses, was one of the leaders during the Exodus.  Huldah was a prophetess during the time of King Josiah.  Esther, Jewish,  was a queen in Persia who was married to King Ahasueros. She was able to stop a holocaust of all Jews in the realm, almost all the known world then, caused by Haman.   Jewish women were not in the background, They were able to speak out.                                                                            

Before 1776, each American colony had its own, uniquely phrased law about voter qualifications. Typically, white men over the age of  21 who owned 50 acres of land might vote, but the details varied by colony and were often a bit murky. The property requirement might be higher or lower; ownership of a certain amount of personal property, or the payment of a certain amount in taxes, might suffice. Expectations about voters’ race and gender were not necessarily made explicit, and teenagers often voted in militia elections. Perhaps 10 to 20 percent of American colonists had the right of suffrage: a remarkable achievement in the 18th-century world, but pitifully low in comparison with the 21st century ideal of universal suffrage for adults.                                          

Jewish women in Palestine also pushed for women's rights in the same era. Founders and leaders of the Union of Hebrew Women for Equal Rights in Erez Israel, which was established in 1919 to campaign for women's suffrage in Palestine and battled for equal rights for women until the establishment of the State in 1948, when it merged with the WIZO organization. (L to R, seated): Zipporah Klausner, Dr. Hannah Berachyahu, Rosa Welt-Straus, Sarah Azaryahu, Hasya Sukenik-Feinsod, (standing):Masha Skivin, Nehamah Pukhachewsky, Rahel Golomb, Fania Metman-Cohen, Adah Twersky, Adah Geller.
Courtesy of Ha-Keren le-Ezrat ha-Isha
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Golda Meir became Prime Minister on March 17, 1969 till June 3, 1974.   

Germany's law enabling female suffrage came into effect on November 30, 1918. A look at the activists who contributed to this achievement and why there's still much to be done in the country to claim equal rights. Men are too emotional to vote, feminist US author Alice Duer Miller wrote back in 1915.      

In 1791, French playwright and women's rights activist Olympe de Gouges wrote the “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen” — and her demands and ideas led to her arrest and beheading at the guillotine two years later.  In France, women became enfranchised through legislation passed in 1944. French women were able to vote the following year in the nation's first general election held after German occupation.

                                                  

  Working together gives equality, often shown in paychecks, not always, but come with its own set of problems, too.  
Western civilization enjoys picnics, when the family gets together. 
This happens because we live in the Western Civilization. 

                                                   

Afghanistani women before Taliban.  What happened?  Did men suddenly fear their freedom?  The Taliban was born in September 1994 in Kandahar, Afghanistan.  The 1964 Constitution of Afghanistan granted women equal rights including universal suffrage and the right to run for office.  It wasn't luck that gave us women the right to vote, but a lot of hard work and women organizing to pool their strength.  Obviously, Afghanis women, worked hard, too.  

ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban are ganging up and taking over Afghanistan.  These people are from a very different culture, as different from the West as if they were on the moon.   Taliban says one thing but does the other.  Females had rights, but since the Taliban takeover, have lost them all.  No one dares to help them.  ISIS believes in keeping women covered as if in a tent completely, and out of sight, out of mind.  It must be that they are so easily sexually stimulated, that they cannot function upon seeing a woman.  So they have learned to go to such extreme lengths.  Socially, their society has never mixed in with women; no dances, being in schools together, working together, nothing. 

                                                 

Women wait in line to receive food in Kabul in 2001.

 Photographer: Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

 There’s not a single woman in the new cabinet and officials have announced that women will only be allowed to study at universities in gender-segregated classrooms. Islamic dress is compulsory.  After the Soviets retreated in 1989, the Taliban, which formed in the early 1990s as a movement among pious youth, eventually gained the upper hand. They marched through the country promising peace and modern government, but the reality was different under their rule from 1996 to 2001, especially for women. They were banned from school, work, speaking in public and even from leaving their homes unless escorted by a male, and they were forced to cover themselves in the burqa, a one-piece garment that covers the entire head and body. Penalties for violations included public lashings and death by stoning.  Yet, are women protected from such things as rape in this society where they are covered up?  While there have been reports in Nangarhar, the eastern province where Islamic State first appeared in 2014 and in Zabul in the south, deep taboos that can make it impossible for women to report sexual abuse make it hard to know its scale.  Reports I've read show that they are definitely being taken advantage of, and their husbands had better take up a sub-machine gun to protect them.  

                                                   

Expecting people of the East to follow suit immediately, especially now, is like trying to reach pie in the sky. They will have to re-group and end up with a modern society which means getting rid of the present one if they expect a difference in their world and be happy with the changes.  Though women must follow the Sharia law today, women are not better off then their Western sisters when it comes to such things as rapes.  It hasn't been that long that Western Society has given women the vote. Under the Taliban, will women be able to use their right to vote?  Probably only if they vote the Taliban choice.  

                 After all, they will want to show the West how fair they are.  

Women everywhere had a hard time finding their voice.  Their role was that of a 2nd class citizen.  As the world looks on, the Taliban are not the norm of the Muslim religion, yet they are taking over a whole country or countries, a religion of extremism.  Half of Afghanistan has been hijacked.    


Resource:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdnfNKNK4wo, Gravitas from India

https://www.heritagesociety.org/virtualtoursuffrage?gclid=Cj0KCQjw8eOLBhC1ARIsAOzx5cFxXrTaKgLOPYzvEwO-vndCgNq2XdB2a4LoQh-XE-0O0avysd2iIskaAijqEALw_wcB

https://www.alumniportal-deutschland.org/en/germany/country-people/how-german-women-obtained-the-right-to-vote-100-years-ago/#:~:text=Germany's%20law%20enabling%20female%20suffrage,Miller%20wrote%20back%20in%201915.

https://momentmag.com/could-jews-vote-in-early-america/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-islamic-state-rape/horrors-that-cant-be-told-afghan-women-report-islamic-state-rapes-idUSKBN1KK0WG

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