Afghanistan’s only female provincial governor has been replaced by a man, an official said Wednesday, in a blow to women politicians in the patriarchal country
Handpicked by Prez
Masooma Muradi was handpicked by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul to lead Daikundi, a mosaic of rolling hills and boulder-strewn ridges in central Afghanistan, hemmed in by insurgencywracked provinces. But protests erupted even before she arrived in Daikundi, with political opponents—almost all men—pillorying her lack of governance experience
‘Can’t hush me up’
Muradi said many people could not “bear having a woman in this position … I won’t allow men to hush me up—society is not used to that from a woman,” she told AFP last year. Her ascent to the post was a remarkable feat in Afghanistan where stubborn patriarchal traditions and conservative attitudes about a woman’s place in the world persist
Gender tokenism
Despite Ghani’s efforts to appoint women to senior positions, Afghan politics remains largely a man’s domain with just a handful of women holding down political positions. In the entire country there are just two female ministers—for women’s affairs and counter-narcotics—one female deputy governor and two women district governors Ghani dismissed the only other woman governor, of central Ghor province, after protests from religious conservatives. On Muradi’s dismissal, a government spokesperson said, “This is a normal procedure in the government. We are thankful for all her efforts. This is not any kind of prejudice against women.”
#WhereAre TheWomen
“The attitude in Afghanistan still is such that not everyone is ready to be governed by a woman,” said Douglas Keh, Afghanistan director at UNDP. Women are still so absent from public life that the social media hashtag #WhereAre TheWomen has gained traction