Afghanistan: ‘No sex, no food’ law passed.

Afghan women rally in support of their President despite his support of 'marital rape' law

On 18th August 2009, Wellington’s Dominion Post reported that Afghan President, Hamid Karzai  has approved a law which appears to condone marital rape. 

The law appears to allow husbands to deny their wives food if they will not have sex with them.

US president Obama has called the law “abhorrent” and the Afghan President has vowed to review the law in light of international pressure, but only if it is found to contravene the fledgling Afghan constitution. 

Should women’s rights take precedence over stabilising the Afghan presidential elections?  Should Western ideals of human rights take precedence over centuries of tradition and indigenous culture?  

The Tradition and Culture defence for denying women basic rights has been a source of contention in feminism since the 1970′s.  Is it our place, as female citizens of the permissive and so-called ‘free’ West to judge, demand changes for, or critisise the choices of, women in other cultures?  Or must we simply stand in silent support of them, hoping for the day they ‘see the light’, and demand to be more like us?

The points where cultural sensitivity and feminism collide – purdah, hijab, female circumcision, arranged marriages - are highly emotive for both sides of the arguement.  Wearing the veil, which for many Muslim women represents protection, faith and humility before God, represents opression, hatred and the implied 2nd class status of women under Islam for many feminists in the West.  When North African women circumsise their own daughters claiming it is for their own good, who ware we to say it is not?  We don’t have to live in a society where being an uncircumsised girl may result in our being outcast, accused of adultery, unmarriable or even killed. 

In other words it is easy for us to point fingers and make demands when we are safe and sound in our Western paradise of equality and Liberal freedom. 

But hang on, in our own back yard teenaged girls starve themselves in an insane attempt to conform with impossible physical ideals while their adult sisters inject the by product of boiled cow hooves into every wrinkle and pore in pursuit of eternal youth.  For crying out loud, we’re still trying to decide if shaving your legs is a sign that you’ve submitted to the partiarchy or are taking control of your body!

Lets try and take a leaf out of the ecologists book  and act locally while thinking globally.  We should be aware of the issues facing women of all cultures, but lets not be blind to the issues still facing us at home. 

For example, today in New Zealand women are still likely to earn 12% less than their male counterparts doing the same job.  At the same time New Zealand women are being hit hardest by the recession.  They’re not as glamorous a duo of issues as fighting a law which lets a man starve his wife into giving him sex, but it’s my issue, today, here, right now.