Afghan Women & Work: Rural vs. Urban

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*****   In many ways, Taliban strictures have hit urban women 
hardest.  Unlike their rural sisters, they were once accustomed to 
fairly widespread liberties. "When I was young," says Naveeda, a 
22-year-old Kabul resident, "education was available to girls, we 
went to Indian movies, there were parties and we learned to sing and 
dance. I wanted to be a doctor or a teacher. I miss all of that very 
badly." But in the countryside, where 95% of Afghan women live, life 
remains much the same. Indeed, at least one thing is better: crime is 
down. Rural women continue to do farmwork, as they have done for 
centuries.... Afghanistan's female literacy rate, now a dismal 4%, is 
not so much worse than the 7% rate of 20 years ago.

(Hannah Bloch, "Still No Place for the Ladies," _TIME Asia_ 156.21 
[29 May 2000] at 
<http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/2000/0529/afghanistan.women.html>) 
*****
-- 
Yoshie

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