KABUL: Leading Afghan women’s rights champion, author, lawmaker and presidential hopeful, Fawzia Koofi, has a revealing anecdote about life as a woman in a man’s land.
As she walked out of the Presidential Palace in Kabul recently, a conservative male parliamentary colleague approached her and said: “Koofi, if you would really like to live in a palace—because you are running for the presidency—why don’t you get married to a president’?”
“It really made me feel angry, because that’s how they see it,”
“If a woman would like to become a president it’s not because she’s qualified for it, it’s because she would like to live in a palace!”
In a riposte, she told her colleague pointedly that, unlike some men with dubious pasts in Afghanistan’s 30 years of conflict, she had no need to hide in the security of a palace.
“I’m happy sometimes when they oppose me because it means I’m something to them, they feel I am strong—and I also give them the required punch, I think.”
Named this year as one of the world’s “150 Fearless Women” by US website The Daily Beast, Koofi, 36, is a widow with two young girls who are addressed in her memoir “Letters to my Daughters”.
http://dawn.com/2012/05/07/afghan-woman ... and/print/
Afghan Woman Sets Sights On Presidency In A Man's Land
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