On Afghan women, the Taliban and the Equal Rights Amendment

The Taliban wrecked Afghan lives in the course of their five-year reign of terror, 1996-2001. Now they are poised to do it once more.

I had read about the Taliban again in the days of dial-up online. I read through all I could stand. The Taliban even experienced a site. The points they have been accomplishing to gals and males — but typically women of all ages — ended up unspeakable.

Following 9/11, I traveled to Afghanistan to see what girls in United States may possibly do for girls there. It was recommended that we give cows, goats and chickens to Afghan ladies so they could sell milk and eggs. All of us at Lotas Patton New York, the NYC ad company where I was a husband or wife, pitched in to increase resources. Generous friends donated. We manufactured the arrangements the returned to Afghanistan to provide.

We flew into Kabul then drove to Jalalabad — five of us in an SUV, two younger gentlemen pursuing us with Kalashnikovs. Incredibly hot dust floor itself into our teeth and hair as we passed cave just after cave in Osama bin Laden’s aged community.

A few of our Afghan close friends took cost of discovering safe destinations to meet the Afghan females, quite a few whom were being widowed by years of war. They had been grateful for the animals and we didn’t will need phrases to know it.

We had also collected a lot of women’s and children’s garments, which we laid out so the gals could “shop.” A cosmetics corporation had donated lipsticks for our vacation. They went rapid.

In Jalalabad, we instantly realized that adult males were in charge. Of almost everything.

Females did not go away the loved ones compound. Adult males did the purchasing and outdoors socializing, women of all ages stayed household. In the dingy guest house, only guys were being found. When my mate and I ventured out in research of bleach to clear the shower, the men’s indignant stares were frightening — but also enraging.

The perverted form of Islam practiced by the Taliban allows for the purest variety of patriarchy. Women do not depart property with no a male family members member. Gals include their faces. Ladies are uneducated. Women of all ages don’t have professions or employment or any sort of independence.

Really should a girl dedicate adultery, she is beheaded. We observed an actual web-site in Kabul exactly where that experienced just lately taken location.

Why patriarchy around partnership amongst and among the the sexes? Why did our nation’s founders exclude ladies or any female pronouns from the Structure? Electrical power must be the best of aphrodisiacs, else why not share?

It is an hideous point, patriarchy. It’s been served up as security, as God’s will, as a man’s noble accountability.

Slender arguments established to deny girls the correct to property, suitable to vote, ideal to have a credit card in her individual identify. Move by phase, American girls have created progress from injustice. But the glaringly evident stage our nation need to get, now, is to amend our Structure to make justice concrete. Just 24 phrases: “Equality of rights, underneath the legislation, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any point out on account of sexual intercourse.”

We hope and pray for the security and liberty of women of all ages and women in Afghanistan. We desire that our personal region observe the equality we preach and insert the Equal Legal rights Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.

Judy Lotas now life in Duck, NC. She and her pal Fern Halyard traveled to Afghanistan just after 9/11 to provide cows, goats and chickens to females there.