Case In Point

Interesting that the presence of Western troops in a political dictatorship, be it secular or theocratic, can have a stimulating effect on equality for women. Here now are women in Afghanistan, formerly subjected to the most horrific of conditions, not permitted to venture out into public for the purpose of pursuing a modest living, even selling minor items in a bazaar to try to earn sufficient funding for shelter and food for their families. Widows were known to slowly starve to death if assistance was not forthcoming from already hard-pressed neighbours.

Women appearing in public without a male family member were subjected to the humiliation of public lashing and imprisonment. A full chador covering the body and most of the female face was a requirement, uncomfortable, hot and necessary regardless of outside temperatures. Music and dance was forbidden, all Western-influenced entertainment was forbidden. Boys attended a madrasa, a religious school that taught the Koran, in Arabic, so the children could recite passages they could not understand. No extended type of education, informing and engaging young minds, suiting a child for a future would be offered.

Girls were forbidden school attendance. Teachers who took it upon themselves to teach girls risked giving up their lives for the effort, if discovered, and many were indeed murdered. Young women were appropriated to live as multiple wives of those men within the Taliban hierarchy, the mullahs who were happy to practise Islamic polygamy. Men were beaten if they were improperly garbed and/or if they were foolish enough to trim their hair. Full beards were a religious requirement for all men, on pain of corporal punishment.

A recent Johns Hopkins University study found infant deaths in Afghanistan fell substantially since the ouster of the Taliban. Afghanistan's public health ministry and the World Bank have announced apparent improvements in all aspects of health care in almost every province of the country, with clear signs of health sector recovery and progress, although people in the more remote areas have not yet received equivalent care levels.

So the banishment of the ever-resurgent, ever-hopeful Taliban most certainly had an effect on Afghan society. In Saudi Arabia, that staunch ally of the West, where Wahhabism was slowly spread through their funding of religious schools for boys from Pakistan to Canada, women still are not permitted to vote, drive a vehicle or work outside the home without the permission of a male relative. This, despite the boastful claim of a senior government minister that the kingdom has met and even surpassed UN standards in equality between the genders.

In Iran, women are not permitted to attend sports events, where soccer tournaments are a wildly popular sport. It is deemed to be un-Islamic for women to appear in public at widely-attended events. This is a reversal of recent vintage, which had previously been relaxed sufficiently to allow women attendance at sports events. In the toughest crackdown in 20 years, this nuclear-assertive country now has deemed it unacceptable that women whose headscarves and clothing are considered to be too revealing in public be permitted to carry on. Female police clad in full black chadors are warning young women to cover up.

It doesn't seem likely that either of these two female-repressive, Islamic-adhering countries will any time soon invite Western influence to alter the situation of half of their population. Pity.