By
Elsa McDowell
The Post and Courier
Originally Published on: 11/6/01
Page: B1
Jennet Robinson Alterman isn't one to shrink from challenges, be it hunger in
Swaziland or health care in remote areas of Afghanistan.
But don't ask her to try on the chador she brought back from her time as a Peace
Corps volunteer there. She won't do it. She winces at the suggestion.
The traditional veiled covering that extremist Muslim sects in Afghanistan require
women to wear means more to her than an uncomfortable, hot and restrictive garment.
It means oppression of the worst kind for women.
And it symbolizes civil rights abuses that must be addressed if post-war Afghanistan
is to be sustainable.
Alterman is executive director of the Center for Women in Charleston. Her mission
is to help women here find resources they need to be successful - a mission that
mirrors a world view where human rights are essential.
During her years as a Peace Corps volunteer and later as an employee of the Peace
Corps in Africa and in Washington, D.C., she became convinced that the condition
of women makes the difference between a country immobilized by poverty and one
with hope for a bright future.
BEHIND A VEIL
Women, she says, in even the most oppressive societies, make key choices about
issues like education, nutrition and health care. When women are disregarded,
the standard of living suffers. When women move toward equality, the standard
of living improves.
Alterman gives an example: The United States, in an effort to raise the standard
of living on an island in the Philippines, provided farmers with a new variety
of rice that produced twice the yield of the variety they had been growing.
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Islanders'
income dropped. The reason, Alterman says, is planners failed
to interview women before initiating the program, and it was
women who harvested and threshed the rice. They also used a
byproduct to make baskets, which they sold to pay for vegetable
gardens.
The high-yield variety of rice took twice as long to harvest and thresh. It left
women no time to make baskets and no money for gardens. The islanders' nutrition
suffered along with their incomes.
INVISIBLE
Alterman says things are different from when she was in Afghanistan in 1977 and
1978. They are even more oppressive for women. Now, like then, women are not
allowed to get medical care from males who are not family members. But then,
unlike now, women could be educated for careers in medicine.
Her job was to develop materials to teach women, most of whom were illiterate,
about caring for their family's health.
She went places westerners had never been. In remote villages, she met men because
they were leaders. But she also met women and came to know them as witty, hospitable
and self-confident.
It is those women, Alterman says, who must play a role in the future of Afghanistan
if that future is to be successful.
And it is the unquestionable responsibility of those countries involved in that
next step to insure that invisible women of Afghanistan not remain so.
Jennet Robinson Alterman will speak more extensively on the topic of women in
Afghanistan at noon Dec. 13 at the Center for Women. Admission is free. |
