Afghan Women Gain Suffrage and Vote for a President

By Charlotte Ponticelli, Senior Coordinator for International Women’s Issues, U.S. Department of State

On October 9, 2004 millions of Afghan women, and men, exercised their right to vote for their President in Afghanistan’s first-ever presidential election. Women comprised some 41% of the more than 8.2 million voters. A woman ran for President! This remarkable milestone, only two and a half years after liberation from decades of oppression, speaks to Afghan enthusiasm for democracy.

Women from all over the country, from Herat, Bamyan, Gardez, Ghazni, Paktia, Jalalabad, Khost--everywhere--voted. One Afghan housewife said, "These elections are very good for women. For the first time, women are having a say in the future of Afghanistan. We are fed up with war." And the men cooperated. At the same polling station, official election observers saw many men in minivans and cars delivering women to the polling center. An elder from Shwak, south-east of Gardez, exclaimed, "I’ve brought every woman I could fit into this car."

Masooda Jalal, the woman candidate, first exercised her political voice at the Emergency Loya Jirga in 2002. She was grateful for the intensive political training she had received through a U.S. funded non-government organization and ran a good 2004 campaign. A woman activist said of Jalal, "She is the only candidate who has been able to achieve a personal relation with voters." Analysts doubted Jalal’s chance to win, but nobody doubts her integrity and earnestness as the doctor who stayed and worked despite the peril.

Afghan women are unstoppable. As First Lady Laura Bush said on October 6, 2004 at the 2004 Fortune Most Powerful Women’s Summit in California, "The struggle for women’s rights is a story of ordinary women doing extraordinary things. And today the women of Afghanistan are writing a new chapter in their history." On nearly every front, they are breaking new ground.

Beyond securing their rights, Afghan women are demanding jobs and access to the commercial sector. They will never be locked up and starving again. With help from the U.S. and other coalition countries, they are now engaged in all kinds of work, from constructing concrete blocks to making delicate knots on exquisite export-quality rugs in an employee-owned cooperative. Afghan women are studying business, working as journalists and judges, and running for President and the Parliament.

An Afghan woman casts her vote in Kandahar,  Afghanistan, October 9, 2004. AP Photo/Elizabeth Dalziel

An equally important need is access to health care. Every 20 minutes an Afghan woman dies in childbirth. Reducing maternal mortality is a priority, along with education for women, and is key to improving women’s lives. For this reason, Under Secretary Paula Dobriansky initiated a Health Advisory Committee on June 15, 2004 at the White House on the occasion of the fifth meeting of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council. The Council discussed several issues, but health care and jobs were top of the list.

President Bush, President Karzai, Secretary Powell, National Security Advisor Rice, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Thompson met with the group of Afghans and Americans who attended this formal Council meeting. First Lady Laura Bush honored the Council with a lunch. More than 20 Afghan women attended the events, including four Afghan Fulbright scholars (a U.S. Department of State Educational exchange program), four Afghan women judges on a Council training project, and 12 U.S. Department of Agricuture Cochran Fellows in the United States for a U.S. Department of Agriculture program for job training in agribusiness.

Afghan woman voting on Oct. 9, 2004. USAID photo.

On July 26, 2004 the Council’s Health Advisory Committee sponsored a special session to discuss health issues and to foster public/ private partnerships to target capacity with needs. Under Secretary Dobriansky hosted the organizing meeting for the committee that Margaret Spellings, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, will chair.

On the education front, the Women’s Teacher Training Institute, another Council initiative, became a reality last summer as well. In cooperation with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and The Afghan Literacy Initiative, the Institute is training teachers to teach basic literacy to Afghan women in rural areas of Afghanistan.

Access to the media as an instrument for human rights and voter education and political participation for women is also on the Council’s agenda. Under Secretary Dobriansky hosted members of the Council for a lunch on November 30 in honor of Afghan video filmmaker, Shakeba Adil. Ms. Adil talked about her newest film, "If I Stand Up" that documents Afghan women’s role in the elections. Adil explained, "If I stand up, and you stand up, a whole village and then a nation will stand up for women’s rights." Ms. Adil, who also worked on the film "Afghanistan Unveiled," was in Washington, DC, as a guest of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) to attend a December 1 screening of this film and a reception hosted by PBS CEO and President Patricia Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell is a member of the Council. PBS broadcast the film throughout November. "Afghanistan Unveiled" was made with funding from the Department of State and the USAID. The people of Afghanistan still face many challenges in strengthening their young democracy. But Afghan women are making great progress in exercising their newfound freedoms.

	Under Secretary Paula Dobriansky (far left) hosts Afghan film maker Shakeba Adil (second from left), Afghan Ambassador to the U.S. Said Tayeb Jawad (far right), and Mrs. Jawad (second from right) at a lunch November 30 in the Department of State to celebrate the PBS broadcast of Ms. Adil’s film, “Afghanistan Unveiled.” State Department photo.