Meryl Streep Says A Female Cat In Kabul ‘Has More Freedom Than A Woman’
(ANALYSIS) On Sept. 23, when speaking at a side event on “The Inclusion of Women in the Future of Afghanistan” at the U.N. General Assembly, Oscar-winning actress and activist Meryl Streep addressed the dire situation of women and girls in Afghanistan.
As she noted, “Today in Kabul a female cat has more freedom than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face, she may chase a squirrel in the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban. A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not in public. This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law.”
Streep’s speech comes as the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan have been suppressed one by one — removing women from the public space and confining them to their homes.
Following the Taliban’s recapture of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, the Taliban revoked the 2004 Constitution, which recognized gender equality, and shuttered the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, replacing it with a Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Vice, in charge of the enforcement of a strict interpretation of Shariah.
Since the Taliban’s takeover, over a hundred edicts were issued restricting the rights of women and girls, including restricting education for girls beyond sixth grade (then banning all forms of education for girls beyond sixth grade), instructing drivers (men) not to accept driving women without “proper hijab” or women without a mahram for travel more than 72 kilometers, limiting access of women and girls to parks, banning women from boarding domestic and international flights without a mahram, asking women government workers to stay home, suspending women from working for national and international no-governmental organizations and banning Afghan women from working in the United Nations, among others.
In August, the Taliban published its new law on “promoting virtue and eliminating vice” that sets up rules for everyday life and adds to the litany of restrictions on women. Article 13 imposes that it is mandatory for a woman to veil her body at all times in public.
A face covering is said to be essential. Women are to cover themselves in front of non-Muslim males and females. A woman’s voice is deemed intimate, and as such, women are not to be heard singing, reciting or reading aloud in public. Women are not allowed to look at men they are not related to by blood or marriage, and vice versa.
Because of the omnipresent restrictions on women’s rights in Afghanistan, experts have been comparing the situation to apartheid, branding the treatment of women in the country as gender apartheid. Karima Bennoune, the Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, defined gender apartheid as “a system of governance, based on laws and/or policies, which imposes systematic segregation of women and men and may also systematically exclude women from public spaces and spheres.”
As she explains, “gender apartheid is anathema to [the] foundational norms of international law, every bit as much as racial apartheid was to the analogous principles prohibiting race discrimination. Ultimately, as racial apartheid was for Black South Africans, gender apartheid is an erasure of the humanity of women. Every aspect of female existence is controlled and scrutinized.”
In 2023, a group of Afghan and Iranian women launched an international campaign “End Gender Apartheid Today,” calling for the codification of gender apartheid, and for the recognition of the situation of women in Afghanistan and Iran as such. The campaign received significant support globally, including by several governments. Nonetheless, the Taliban pressed on with the restrictions of women’s rights and their exclusion from the society and the future of Afghanistan.
During the U.N. event, Secretary-General António Guterres said that “what is happening in Afghanistan can be compared with some of the most egregious systems of oppression in recent history.” He promised that the U.N will “continue to amplify the voices of Afghan women and call for them to play a full role in the country’s life, both inside its borders and on the global stage.”
The international community must remind the Taliban that Afghanistan does not have a future without women and girls, and without their rights and freedoms being restored.
This piece was republished from Forbes with permission.
Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab is a human rights advocate, author and co-founder of the Coalition for Genocide Response. She’s authored the book “Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle East” and more than 30 UN reports. She works on the topic of genocide and persecution of ethnic and religious minorities around the world. She is on X @EwelinaUO.