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Picture of the Day: A Woman Votes in Afghanistan by Phyllis Chesler Pajamas Media June 21, 2010 http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/801/woman-votes-in-afghanistan Send Comment RSS Share: Excerpt: Once upon a time, long ago, when I lived in Kabul, I was shocked when I first saw a woman wearing a burqa. I was twenty years old but had grown up in New York and considered myself something of a worldly intellectual. True, the women in my family did not wear burqas—but they did wear attractive head scarves, long coats and gloves. True, at home, the female servants were not in burqas; they would not be able to work. True, female agricultural workers or female servants on errands did not always wear burqas—but if a male stranger passed by they would quickly, deferentially, turn their faces away and hide their faces in their headscarves. And, I was there in the "salad days" when returning Afghan college students were hopeful about the future of Afghanistan, and who even now, in bitter exile, remember the 1960s and 1970s as a time when Afghanistan had flourished and began to modernize. Read the complete original version of this item... Related Topics: Islamic Gender & Religious Apartheid
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