The Struggle Continues
by rbobbitt
Sitara Achikzai, a prominent women’s rights activist was assassinated in outside her home in Kandahar, Afghanistan this past week. Achikzai, who lived in Germany during the Taliban rule, had returned to Afghanistan after the ousting of the Taliban to fight for women’s rights. A member of Kandahar provincial council, she was often vocal in urging women to take jobs and join the fight to regain their rights and push for equality.
This senseless murder sheds light on the continued fight for equality faced by women around the world, a reminder that the feminist movement for equality is far from being completed. Oftentimes, comfortably swayed by our middle-class lifestyles, women may see the fight for equality as a done deal of the 1970’s, forgetting that at any given moment around the world women’s lives are suppressed and enslaved. While relative equality for women has been reached in the first world, in many other regions in the world women suffer from the effects of patriarchy and economic repression, preventing them from living their lives and being recognized as fully human.
BBC article on assassination
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Even in the first world women have not achieved equality in many spheres: economics (unequal wages), politics (low level of participation in elected office), in the workplace (few women in top executive positions), etc… It is good to remember the struggle for equality in the developed and developing world both and promote working together for change.
Keri