STOCKHOLM, 27 August 2005 — Many Afghan women who would like to contest the Sept. 18 elections cannot do so because they have no money of their own and their husbands control the family purse strings, Kabul’s women’s affairs minister said yesterday. Massouda Jalal, in Sweden for a meeting on women’s rights in societies recovering from conflicts, said hundreds of women were running for seats in Afghanistan’s parliament and local councils, but there could have been thousands more.
“The main reason thousands of women didn’t become candidates is that they can’t afford the financial expenses,” Jalal told reporters, adding that this was because men were often in charge of the household money in the strongly Muslim nation. Those women who are standing for office “are always mentioning the money as a problem. This is a bigger problem than security,” she said.
About 30,000 US-led and NATO troops are trying to defeat a Taleban insurgency in Afghanistan. “God willing, we hope security will allow women to vote and participate, but security is not completed, it is still a concern even though we have a partial peace,” Jalal said. “I hear from candidates that some of them get threats, but it doesn’t mean they are not going ahead — we have hundreds of candidates,” Jalal said.
“They think about security and it being a risky job but it’s the little money for making the campaign, to print posters and be active, that’s the problem,” she added. Women were excluded from public roles under the Taleban rule which ended in 2001 but now have equal rights under the constitution adopted earlier this year, with a quota of 25 percent of seats in parliament reserved for women. Jalal said there was no easy way round the problem of financing women’s participation in the elections, as foreign funding is not allowed and a recent scheme to print campaign posters for women had failed. While many women candidates have received death threats from warlords and former Taleban members looking to disrupt the elections, Jalal said a general lack of funds is the biggest obstacle for women wanting to add their names to the ballots. “With the hundreds of meetings I’ve had (with potential candidates), always they would mention the money,” she said.
Afghan laws guarantee that one-fourth of the parliament, or 68 seats, will be filled by women. The same ratio also applies to the provincial council elections, where a total of 124 seats are reserved for women, she said. The guaranteed seats are a way for lawmakers to ensure that women are represented on the political stage, but Jalal said gender equality issues still need more attention from the government. “We receive the lowest budget among all the ministries,” Jalal said. “Sometimes I call the ministry of women’s affairs the ministry of poor.” She said the ministry’s annual budget is $1 million, of which 62 percent is used to pay salaries to the staff, and another 15 percent is swallowed by administrative costs. “Then what remains for activities?” she said. “Very little.”
