Afghanistan’s women vote for change

Afghans went to the polls to vote for a president for the second time in their history,with turnout of women in particular expected to be low due to a protracted Taliban intimidation campaign.

Her eyes barely visible through the tightly woven grill of her blue burqa,Nadeera said her Afghan husband forbids her from showing her face but told her to vote however she wants.

Like all the votes cast by Afghan women in Thursday’s presidential and provincial council elections,Nadeera’s ballot knows no sex discrimination.

“Today I am voting for change,” she said,sitting on a low bench at a primary school converted into a polling centre near her home village of Madrasa,on the Shomali plain outside Kabul.

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“There has been no change in the quality of my life since the fall of the Taliban” in 2001,she said,referring to the lack of economic development.

“My husband was earning 150 afghanis (three dollars) a day as a labourer then and he earns the same now,” the 37-year-old said.

Afghans went to the polls on Thursday to vote for a president for the second time in their history,with turnout of women in particular expected to be low due to a protracted Taliban intimidation campaign.

There can be little denying the lot of Afghan women has improved since the end of the horror of the Taliban regime,under which they were not permitted to go to school,work or leave their homes without male relatives.

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Afghanistan elections

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