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FILE PHOTO: Afghan women clad in burkas wait for transportation on a road in Kabul November 5, 2012.
UN: Taliban criminalizes sights and sounds of women
On Sunday, the United Nations condemned new laws enacted by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Vice and Virtue that prohibit the display of women’s faces and bodies in public and said that “even the sound of a female voice” outside the home constitutes “a moral violation” and can be grounds for arrest.
Since 2022, Afghan women have been barred from education beyond the sixth grade and from employment outside the home. They are now forbidden from singing, reciting, and reading aloud in public. They are also not allowed to laugh very loud, and their laughter should not be heard by men. Women cannot look at men they are not related to by blood or marriage and vice versa.
As for men, they must grow beards, eschew Western dress and hairstyles, pray and observe religious fasts.
Breaking these rules may result in warnings, confiscation of property, or detention for up to three days. The ministry has already detained thousands for similar violations, but the new codification represents a further crackdown that women say has made life in the country completely intolerable. Roza Otunbayeva, the UN’s envoy to Afghanistan, said it represents a “distressing vision” for the country’s future.
In response, Vice and Virtue Minister Mohammad Khaled Hanafi claimed the regulations protect women’s rights under Islamic law. We’ll be watching whether Otunbayeva’s report to the UN, scheduled for Sept. 18, makes any difference, and whether the rest of the international community will join the condemnation — though serious action to help Afghan women and girls is unlikely.The resident doctors hold placards while chanting slogans during a protest against the brutal rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor from Kolkata's RG Kar Hospital. The doctors' strike continues in the national capital, making a week since the indefinite protest began over the rape and murder of a medical student in Kolkata, causing disruptions to services and affecting patients.
India’s doctors continue strike over Kolkata killing
Indian junior doctors extended their strike on Sunday, prompting thousands more to march in solidarity followingthe horrific rape and murder of a 31-year-old postgraduate medical student in Kolkata. The tragedy has captured national and international attention, with protesters demanding the government do more to tackle the longstanding crisis of rape and sexual abuse of women and girls.
The victim’s bloodied body was discovered on Aug. 9 at the state-run G. Kar Medical College hospital in Kolkata, in a seminar hall where she was resting after a 36-hour shift. One hospital worker has been detained, but the victim’s parents suspect their daughter was gang-raped.
The crime has ignited protests across India, where an average ofnearly 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022. Women’s rights activists say women remain unsafe despite tougher laws enacted after an infamous gang-rape case in a Delhi bus in 2012. The Indian Medical Association has called for enhanced security protocols for hospital staff.
At recent independence day commemorations,Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “Crimes against women should be probed swiftly, and stringent punishment should be given to those who commit demonic acts.” Modi and Indian authorities have been criticized, however, for ignoring a spate of recent gang rapes in Manipur until video evidence of the crimes emerged.
We’ll see whether this latest incident pushes Modi’s government to act more swiftly – and where the investigation goes from here.
BJP Mahila Morcha workers celebrate the introduction of Women's Reservation Bill in the Special Session of the Parliament in Ahmedabad on Thursday.
A political breakthrough for India’s women
On Monday, India opened its first special session of parliament since 2017, and expectations rose that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a plan to use the short session to make an unusual – maybe historic -- announcement.
There’s precedent for that assumption. Six years ago, Modi used a special session to roll out a nationwide goods and services tax to help centralize India’s economy. Many analysts now credit that move with sharply boosting internal trade across India, strengthening the country’s overall economic performance.
On Wednesday, in a nearly unanimous vote, India’s lower house of parliament passed the so-called Women’s Reservation Bill that will reserve one-third of its seats for women, who currently hold just 15%. They will also hold at least one-third of seats in state legislative assemblies.
The bill will move to the upper house for approval this week. It will then require approval from at least half of India’s 28 states.
If nothing else, the women who make up nearly half of India’s 950 million registered voters can have confidence their influence will play a much larger role in the direction of the world’s largest democracy.
What is feminist foreign policy?
Alles liebe zum Frauentag! To mark International Women's Day we delve into feminist foreign policy. Which countries have adopted the gender-focused framework that shapes how they interact with other states, and how does the policy play out in practice?
Germany made headlines this week when Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock unveiled a new feminist foreign policy framework, outlining Berlin's efforts to boost female participation in international affairs. It directs an additional 12 billion euros in development funds to further global gender equality and says that Berlin will work to ensure that European foreign policy focuses more on the needs of women worldwide.
But what is a feminist foreign policy, and what do proponents and critics of the framework have to say about it?
First, some background. In 1995, then-first lady Hillary Clinton declared in Beijing that “women’s rights are human rights,” publicly advocating that gender equality be a core principle in international politics.
Since then, a growing number of political influencers have pushed for a radical overhaul of how states interact with each other, arguing that the pursuit of gender equality should be at the heart of all international politics.
While there is no uniform approach to its implementation – countries have interpreted the framework differently – there are areas of overlap, including the idea that increasing the number of women working in foreign policy reduces conflict and enhances peaceful outcomes. A look at the impact of having women negotiators, mediators, and witnesses involved in 182 peace agreements from 1989-2011, for example, shows that those deals involving females were 35% more likely to survive at least 15 years, according to a report by the International Peace Institute.
There’s broad agreement that gender equality at home, including increased female participation in the workforce, at the negotiating table, and in policy-making, boosts security at home and abroad. As a result, there's been an uptick in female participation in legislatures around the globe in many countries, while some institutions have introduced gender quotas in politics. The European Union, for instance, started calling for a minimum of 50% women in all its decision-making positions back in 2020 – and a whopping 85% of women in decisions about development aid.
The Wallström effect. Sweden was the first country to adopt a feminist foreign policy in 2014, when former Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, a no-nonsense stalwart of the left-wing Social Democratic Party, argued that gender issues should govern how Stockholm doles out aid and conducts trade negotiations. While Wallström’s plan was initially met with skepticism, including amongst the diplomatic corps, she also applied this approach to the private sector, pushing for gender quotas on company boards.
Crucially, for Sweden, adopting the term feminist was not only an ideological play but also a strategic one: A 2020 report by PwC found that if the female employment rate across OECD states matched Sweden’s, the group’s collective gross domestic product could be boosted by $6 trillion.
The trend has since caught on, with comparable policies adopted by Canada, Mexico, Spain, Luxembourg, Chile and France. Mexico has mandated that an equal number of men and women work within the foreign ministry, for example, and pushed for “gender equality in all policies to combat climate change” in international forums.
Meanwhile, under former Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, Canada in 2017 committed to directing 95% of its foreign aid budget over five years toward programs in which gender equality was the primary or significant objective (the latter caveat, however, has been criticized for vagueness).
How do these policies play out in practice? Like with many lofty foreign policy objectives, it’s hard to measure what constitutes success. For instance, how much of Sweden’s economic growth over the past decade can be attributed to this gender-first policy as opposed to external economic factors? (Crucially, Sweden’s new center-right government ditched the policy in Dec. 2022, saying that “labels on things have a tendency to cover up the content.”)
What’s more, critics argue that feminist foreign policies can be preachy and abstract. Berlin, for its part, says that it will be more “gender sensitive” in doling out money and that it will cultivate a “feminist reflex” within the foreign ministry – neither of which are particularly measurable. Many have also accused Mexico of extreme inconsistencies, arguing that it has done little to address rampant gender-based violence and femicide at home.
Even the most gung-ho proponents of feminist foreign policy acknowledge that it can be an abstract concept that’s difficult to implement. “Many countries use it as a virtue-signaling branding exercise,” says Marissa Conway, CEO of the United Nations Association in the UK and feminist foreign policy expert.
When I asked Conway about Germany’s approach, she hesitated. “In some ways it’s impressive, but it is also very aspirational,” she says, adding that “it strikes me as very hollow,” referring to the fact that Berlin has voiced support for militarism which is at odds with traditional feminism.
But how then do proponents of the approach reconcile this non-militaristic stance with the need to help democracies – like Ukraine – protect themselves from authoritarianism? “Feminist foreign policy is not some magic wand that we can wave over everything and it will make conflicts and wars stop,” Conway says.
Instead, “it is a path to a very long-term goal in shaping how states interact with each other.”
The Future (of Global Leadership) is Female
On the show this week, Ian previews UN General Assembly Week and tells you why it's more than blustery speeches and traffic headaches for New Yorkers. Then, Georgetown University's Melanne Verveer talks about how global leadership for women is changing in a #MeToo era. And on Puppet Regime, it's game show time