On April 15, some 300 Afghan women marched in Kabul under a rain of male abuse to protest against a new law that would impose a series of Taliban-like restrictions on women. It would permit marital rape, limit women's movements without male permission, and even make it illegal for a woman to refuse to dress as her husband wishes. President Hamid Karzai, who signed the law (which affects only the Shia minority), now says he didn't read it and promises to amend the offending sections.
When the Western media sought quotes from the women, they frequently heard a Western-style feminist refrain: "These laws would make women into a kind of property." In the West, the counterpoint to the notion of woman as property has been a highly individualistic demand for personal autonomy - decision-making based primarily on a woman's own wishes, rather than as wife, mother, community member or worshipper.
But, while some Western feminist insights may be useful to Afghan women and other women in the developing world as they resist certain forms of male oppression, we should not assume that our job is to proselytize "our" feminism. On the contrary, the feminism expressed by women such as these Afghan heroines should educate us in the West about our own shortcomings.
The core theory with which emerging feminists in more traditional and religious societies are working is far different from that of Western feminism - and, in some ways, far more profound and humane.
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