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Inequality is so deeply embedded in this society that there are no easy solutions. In a new opinion poll in Afghanistan, 87 percent of those surveyed said women needed to ask their husbands' permission to vote. There was little difference in the answers of men and women.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/06/opinion/06kris.html?oref=loginalso from Kristof's article:
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The entire jail is a kaleidoscope of woe. It's been two years since President Bush declared that in Afghanistan, "Today, women are free." But that's news to the inmates.
Nazilah, 17, had been married to an old man with tuberculosis who beat her - she was his second wife. She ran away and was picked up by the police. Now the authorities are figuring out whether they can return her to her husband's family without getting her killed.
Then there is Sohailla, 18, who says she was kidnapped for three days by the family of a young man who wanted to marry her (the police suspect that she went to his house voluntarily). The police subjected her to a virginity test; after she failed, she got a three-year sentence for fornication.
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Local girls look at a U.N workers unloading ballot kits from a U.N. helicopter in Ghumaipayan Mahnow village some 410 kilometers (256 miles) northeast of Kabul, Afghanistan (news - web sites), Monday, Oct. 4, 2004. By air is the only way to deliver the electoral material in the inaccessible areas of the Badakhshan province. A helicopter distributed on Monday 84 ballot boxes and electoral kits in 24 remote villages near Tajikistan's border to hold its first direct presidential vote on Oct. 9. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)