Global Women's Voices: An Online Dialogue In recognition of International Women's Day, March 8, women leaders from Brazil, India, Uganda, and the United States, discussed the successes and challenges facing women in different parts of the world. Global Women’s Voices: An Online Dialogue is a joint initiative of OneWorld U.S., Feminist Majority Foundation, PLANetWIRE.org, Women’s EDGE, Global Health Council and Digital Freedom Network. Tuesday, March 5 6-7 pm ET Mavis Leno Chair, Feminist Majority's Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan Mavis Nicholson Leno is the Chair of the Feminist Majority Foundation's Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan, and has been the United States' most outspoken critic of the Taliban's horrific treatment of women. Leno joined the Board of Directors of the Feminist Majority Foundation in 1997, after playing an active role in the effort to defeat Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action initiative on the 1996 California ballot. Leno assumed her role as Chair of the Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan in 1997, less than one year after the Taliban's brutal treatment of women began. She testified on gender apartheid in March 1998 before Senator Dianne Feinstein of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and has consistently urged the Clinton and Bush Administrations as well as the U.S. Congress to do more to restore women's human rights in Afghanistan. Her involvement in the Feminist Majority's Campaign was also instrumental in defeating the energy company UNOCAL's efforts to construct an oil pipeline across Afghanistan that would have supplied the Taliban with over $100 million and dramatically increased their control in the region. She is currently a leader in the effort to make the restoration of women's rights a nonnegotiable element of a post-Taliban Afghanistan, and has been at the forefront of insuring that the plight of Afghan women is included in the world's reporting of the war in Afghanistan. Recent television appearances include Larry King Live, The Today Show, CNN with Paula Zahn, Hardball with Chris Matthews, MSNBC Nightly News and the Tonight Show. Mavis has also been featured in articles in TIME, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, US Magazine and People Magazine. Continue the discussion on our Bulletin Boards!

Joan: Can you describe the main goals of your work or your organization's work? Mavis Leno: The goals of my particular part of activism with the Feminist Majority are simply to restore the civil and human rights of the women in Afghanistan and ensure the stability of the situation in that country so that these women can use their rights in reality because they feel safe in doing so, rather than having theoretical rights, which are too dangerous for them exercise.

Trent: How did you come to do this work and what inspires you to continue? Mavis Leno: I am a lifelong feminist. I felt for a while now that it was time for feminists to look beyond our own borders and give a helping hand to other women who are not as far up the road in their struggles. When I joined the Feminist Majority the Taliban had only been in power in Afghanistan for a few months and as soon as I heard from our chairperson, Eleanor Smeal, what had happened to these women, I knew this was where I wanted to make a stand. I hoped that so many women would eventually join in that it would put the rest of the world on notice that things can no longer be done to women without the perpetrators having to deal with a terrible outcry from free women.

Janelle: What are some of the successes that have resulted from your work? Mavis Leno: Prior to the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, we succeeded in keeping UNOCAL from constructing a gas pipeline through Afghanistan which would have brought millions and millions of dollars to the Taliban and made them nearly impossible to unseat. We succeeded very early on in our campaign in getting the United States to refuse recognition to the Taliban as the legal government of Afghanistan when we threw up a protest that brought women's objections to the US government's attention. We were able to get the State Department to radically increase the number of Afghan immigrants in this country. We were able to make the American public so aware of this terrible situation, which had been given virtually no press coverage prior to our campaign that the State Department told us that they got more correspondence on this issue than on any other for three years running. We were able to ensure that at least some girls and women in Afghanistan could still get the education forbidden to them by the Taliban by helping to fund over 1,000 girls schools which met secretly in Afghanistan but which now function openly. And we were able to make the oppression of women by the Taliban a huge human rights issue and to rally women all over the world to speak with one voice on this outrage.

Josh: What are some of the main challenges facing women in Afghanistan? Mavis Leno: The main challenge for them now is to go back to the work or the study programs that they pursued before the Taliban. The situation in their country is still chaotic but leadership needs to be shown because where braver women will go other girls and women will follow.

suzie: What are some of the successes of the women's movement in Afghanistan? Is there a women's movement in Afghanistan? Mavis Leno: Yes, there most definitely is a women's movement in Afghanistan. There is a women's movement in every country in the world. So, the suggestion that being oppressed and limited by your culture is a cultural choice is clearly false with the obvious evidence that women everywhere are striving to gain parity. There are a lot of unsung successes of the women's movement and they are not unsung because no one is paying attention, but because women prefer, in many countries, to stage a silent revolution. In this way, the many people who might resist the idea of women gaining parity will have become accustomed to female participation without ever realizing that there was any sort of movement directed towards achieving that.

Moderator: Thanks to our speaker and everyone who joined us for this chat. Don't forget to visit our Campaign page to take action. After the chat, continue the discussion on the FeministCampus.org Bulletin Boards! Mavis Leno: In working towards these goals for these women, we are working for a better future for the whole world. After September 11th, denial over the idea that political problems in other countries will not eventually affect us should be over for good. Acknowledging that the world is an uncertain place, who knows but that someday we will be calling on the Afghan women to come to our rescue. Thank you for joining us today. Be sure to visit www.helpafghanwomen.com and get involved!

Saphira Isa: I'm currently working on a research project on the regulation of women in Afghanistan- do you know who afghan women were allowed to marry under Taliban rule? Mavis Leno: I do not know a lot about that but I do know that a lot of girls were forced to marry Taliban members. I also know that the Taliban were obsessed with ethnicity so that, for instance, Hazzara girls were more likely sold into sexual slavery, whereas, Pashtun girls, being of the same ethnicity as most of the Taliban would be acceptable as, basically, brides married at the point of a gun.

Texas Femme: Mavis, can you tell us a little bit more about how you and FMF have funded schools for women and girls? How did you make sure that the money was actually getting to these schools, especially when they were underground? Mavis Leno: We got small organizations, everything from book clubs to civic organizations to schools, to adopt a home school in Afghanistan so that the individual funding for any one group was quite small. In this way, we were able to get a great deal of support from people who don't necessarily have a lot of money to donate, but want to help. We knew as well as it is humanly possible to know that the money was going where it was supposed to go because we have people in our organization who have been over and met with the people we would be funding. They also met with many Afghan women fleeing the regime who were willing and able to tell us who was legitimate.

Rita: So, what can we do right now to help women in the Afghanistan? It seems like now that the Taliban is out of power, there's not really as much press coverage of their situation right now. Mavis Leno: The most urgent help that women require right now can only be done on a truly useful scale by our government. One of the major roles that individuals can play in this is constant pressure on our government to continue its current pledge to help rebuild the infrastructure of Afghanistan and guarantee the ongoing participation of women as equals in that society. On a smaller but equally useful scale, we can also continue to directly aid home schools which will be needed for a long time while school buildings are being reconstructed. If you want to know how to implement there suggestions go to our website www.helpafghanwomen.com.

Alicia: Can you describe any trips you have taken to Afghanistan as an activist and spokesperson for the Feminist Majority? Mavis Leno: I have never gone to Afghanistan because from quite early on in our campaign both myself and the Feminist Majority as a group were very well known to the Taliban. They knew my name, and what I looked like, and it would have been extremely dangerous for me to travel in a country where even anonymous journalists were afraid to go.

Beth: Now that the Taliban has fallen and women in Afghanistan are getting their rights back, will you stay involved in the FMF's Afghanistan campaign? What will your new goals be? Mavis Leno: I'll stay involved with this campaign until every goal is met for these women within their own country. Once they are genuinely free and fully participant in all of their country's pursuits, the rest of their goals for women in their country will of course be pursued by them, just as we are still doing in our own country. Our goal is to see the women safely established in an equal role in a constitutional democracy, which was exactly the situation of women in Afghanistan twenty years ago. Once restored to this, I know they will take it from there themselves.

Heather: I know that before September 11th, it was difficult to get people's attention about the plight of women in Afghanistan. How has this changed since September 11th? Are you worried that the world may turn a deaf ear again? Mavis Leno: Of course it changed radically since September 11th, probably as much as anything. The best way for our government and news media to demonstrate the reckless and evil nature of the Taliban was to make a point of their treatment of women in the preceding five and a half years. Having made a point of the cruelty to these women, an outcry arose to do something about it. What we ought to have learned from this situation is that what men are willing to do to the women in their society is a good predictor of what they will eventually want to do to their enemies. It is in our own self interest to see to it that these ideas are never allowed to prevail in Afghanistan, again. Naturally I am concerned that America, which is notorious throughout the world for its short attention span, will not stick to this course once public interest has drifted on. If that should happen, I can tell you without being Miss Cleo that we will be back over there doing this all again in ten years.

Ilsa: Do you think the new Women's Ministry is in a position to ensure that Afghan women have equal rights under the new government? Mavis Leno: I think they are in a position to make that sincere attempt, but they need very strenuous back-up, both financial and physically protective back-up from our government and all the allied governments. We know that the current situation is precarious for these women. There is not enough money, and by this I mean not even enough to provide office space for these women to perform their functions in, and not enough protection for them to be nearly as well-defended as the average US T.V. star. We need to do more privately to help them and we certainly need to ask our government to quickly and radically give them the back-up they need which would amount to a tiny expense of money and manpower and have an enormous impact on their ability to function effectively.

noley: What has the response been from women in Afghanistan to the Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid? Mavis Leno: From within Afghanistan we have gotten letters over the years smuggled out, thanking us for our efforts. We believe that we brought some hope to them in what amounted to their imprisonment and we have never had any negative response of any kind since we have taken all of our advice on what to ask for and what course to pursue on behalf of the Afghan women from Afghan women themselves. We recognize that in a completely different culture, women's way of being equal contributors and the path that they follow to get to that will often be completely different from anything we could think of, so they have always been our advisors.

Noel: What are your thoughts about peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan? Should we have them? Should they come from the US or the UN? Mavis Leno: We should absolutely have them because Afghanistan is full of small factions pursuing tribal interests and ethnic interests at the expense of the majority of the country and what's good for the majority of the country. As far as whether it should be the US or the UN, I feel that that should come down to which the Afghans themselves would prefer and also who can provide the most forces.

Leah: How much has life improved for women in Afghanistan now that the Taliban has been removed from power? Mavis Leno: That's a hard question to answer because it varies radically from one portion of the country to the next. I would say that the single most beneficial thing to all of the women of that country is that they now have real hope. But opportunities to resume jobs or interrupted educations are still limited from one place to another depending on how much infrastructure is left and how physically safe the women feel in a given area to leave their houses and resume their prior lives.

Inez: I always sign online petitions that people send me, and on websites in the hope that it will make a difference. Do you think that all of the email that's been sent to Senators, the State Department, and the UN on this issue made an impact? Mavis Leno: Oh Yes! I think it has made a huge impact and it has made that impact for the simple and obvious reason that people in this and other democratic countries, have to run for election, so it is very important for them to see the way that the political wind is blowing. There is no question that the enormous outpouring of petitions, letters and e-mails turned this particular wind into a hurricane.