Title

The Political Gender Gap in Afghanistan

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Journal of Women, Politics and Policy

Abstract

Women’s empowerment has become a salient issue in nation building in recent times. The need to secure basic human rights may well be at the core of the attention, but development experts appear to have recognized the core role of women in family and community well-being in developing countries and are beginning to tout the importance of women’s empowerment in all the aspects of development policies as reflected in the European Union’s Millennium Development Goals. This study explores political gender differences in Afghanistan, a Muslim country of extensive gender differentiation. The gender disparities we observe are not what one might have expected. Men outperform women only in those specific areas where the prohibitive structural and social limitations placed on women by the larger Afghan society would predict. We contend that these gaps would attenuate as Afghanistan’s nascent democracy deepens and extends more freedoms to Afghan women.

First Page

285

Last Page

310

DOI

10.1080/1554477X.2015.1050906

Publication Date

1-1-2015

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS