President Hamid Karzai's nomination of a record three female candidates to cabinet posts was a short-lived victory for women in Afghan politics. In rejecting the majority of Karzai's nominees for the second time, Afghanistan's parliament dealt a blow to both the president and women's advocates around the country.

Only one female nominee was approved during Saturday's parliamentary vote, with lawmakers rejecting 10 of 17 candidates from Karzai's second cabinet list, including two women. The only woman among Karzai's first round of nominees also failed to gain approval during a previous vote two weeks earlier.

A spokesman for the president said Karzai would not submit a third list until lawmakers return from a parliamentary recess in late February.

Karzai's revised picks included Amina Afzali, who was approved to head the ministry of work and social affairs, and two candidates rejected by parliament: Palwasha Hassan for the ministry of women's affairs, and Suraya Dalil for the ministry of public health.

Although critics claimed that some nominees were inexperienced or aligned with warlords, women parliamentarians and political experts generally praised the female candidates' qualifications ahead of the vote of confidence. Palwasha Hassan, the rejected nominee to replace outgoing Women's Affairs Minister Husn Bano Ghazanfar, is widely known as a dedicated women's rights activist.

The results are a setback for those Afghan women parliamentarians who supported the new cabinet picks. Though Karzai opted to include three female nominees only after his first candidates were rejected on January 2, the president's decision was seen as a response to mounting criticism from women's rights advocates - and the latest victory in a slow push to raise the political profile of Afghan women.

Women's rights defenders challenge Karzai

Late last year, a press conference was held at the offices of the Afghan Women's Network to voice the panelists' "serious rejection" to the first appointments. "Unfortunately, in the new Afghan cabinet recommended by the president, no positive step for women's inclusion has taken place," their statement read.

Afghan parliamentarian Shinkai Karokhail also helped organize a news briefing with fellow female lawmakers after Karzai chose a woman to head only one of more than 20 government ministries. She told Deutsche Welle that the initial nominations, characterized by the president as a "mirror" of Afghanistan's people, were seen as a disappointment - and not just for women in parliament. The near-exclusion of female names from Karzai's initial set of nominees underscored just how far women have to go in their ongoing struggle to clinch top leadership roles in politics and policy-making in Afghanistan.

For Shukria Barakzai, who has been a member of Afghanistan's parliament since 2005, Karzai's nomination of women to only three of 25 ministry posts was not nearly enough.

"What I really want is to see women in Afghanistan not only be a symbol," she told Deutsche Welle. "I want women to be decision-makers, not only for the ministry of women's affairs."

Karzai did pledge to name several women to deputy minister posts. But Theresa de Langis of the United Nations women's fund UNIFEM said such positions signify a kind of "glass ceiling." De Langis told Deutsche Welle that more must be done to mentor female deputy ministers and other qualified Afghan women.

Political progress by the numbers

According to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released in December 2009, women accounted for less than 22 percent of civil service positions in Afghanistan that year, a more than nine-percent drop over 2006. The country's Supreme Court Council also has no female members.

The Afghan parliament, by comparison, is more gender-balanced: About one in every four officeholders in the lower house is female, thanks to a quota established under the Afghan Constitution in 2004 to give women a legal claim to seats in the country's legislature.

Dr. Citha Maass, a senior associate and Afghanistan expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told Deutsche Welle that women's political prospects in Afghanistan have generally brightened since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

"There is a clear improvement for women, which was supported by the international effort," she said.

During the 1960s, when political change was generally confined to the Afghan capital in Kabul, enlightened members of the royal family and the educated intelligentsia were among the few segments of society open to the concept of women's advancement. Maass noted a "broader social basis" for female politicians today.

"Personal Status" in public life

Still, for many Afghan women considering a foray into politics, securing support from a husband or other male family members still constitutes an important part of the process. The first version of the Shi'ite Personal Status Law, which was signed by President Karzai in March 2009, required Shi'ite women to ask for their spouses' permission when leaving the home.

According to Maass, the law was "even more restrictive than any of the worst Taliban decrees." As a written interpretation of Islamic law for Afghanistan's Shi'ite minority, the document enacted restrictions on women's mobility in public life and was seen as a bid to shore up Shi'ite support for the Afghan government. It also defined a man's right to demand sexual intercourse with his wife, which critics said legalized marital rape.

"It's now the legal basis for a husband to prevent his wife from becoming socially active, from engaging in politics, from applying to higher positions," Maass told Deutsche Welle. "The difference is now, that due to the law, there is now a legal basis to resist the advancement of women."

The law triggered an outcry among members of the international community and Afghanistan's female parliamentarians, who spearheaded efforts to revise the law's most restrictive elements. The article on a woman's right to leave the home was amended to include exceptions such as employment, education and medical treatment.

Afghan lawmaker Shinkai Karokhail was among those who opposed this section in the first version of the law, which hampered a woman's ability to run for and hold political office.

"If you cannot represent yourself, by yourself, how can you represent others?" she told Deutsche Welle.

Read more on the struggle Afghan women face in politics

From progressives to "placeholders"

Though a group of women parliamentarians worked together to campaign against the Shi'ite Personal Status Law, female politicians are a diverse group, and efforts to organize around common goals have proven difficult.

Many members of the Afghan parliament are political independents, and party affiliations are often viewed with suspicion based on the country's experience with civil war and repressive governance. Almost all of the 84 political parties registered with Afghanistan's Ministry of Justice are run by men, though female lawmaker Fatima Nazari successfully established the country's first political party for women's causes in February 2008.

But not all women lawmakers can be considered progressive when it comes to gender politics. "Many warlords nominated their daughters, their wives, their cousins, and only a few female parliamentarians are really outspoken," Dr. Babak Khalatbari, country director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told Deutsche Welle. That development was seen as one way of bypassing an electoral rule that disqualified candidates with links to private militia.

Meanwhile, more vocal female parliamentarians face a political culture shaped by traditional conceptions of power, wherein politics is considered a male realm. Entrenched opposition to women in political office is deeply rooted and potentially life-threatening for women. According to a recent HRW report, every female parliamentarian interviewed by the organization said she had been threatened or intimidated.

Security concerns not unfounded

The report also cited data collected in 17 Afghan provinces by UNIFEM in 2008, when the organization recorded 10 murders of women working in public positions, from teachers to politicians. Recent cases include the September 2008 assassination of top Kandahar policewoman Malalai Kakar, and the murder of Sitara Achakzai, a provincial council member and human rights activist, less than six months later.

This "culture of fear and impunity," the HRW report read, "will be a strong deterrent to women who consider entering public life." UNIFEM’s Theresa de Langis told Deutsche Welle that her organization had received reports from women who considered the risks too high to attempt a run for office.

"The less secure it is outside the home, the less able women will be to claim public space," she said.

Elections pose a particularly intractable security problem for both female candidates and voters. Consistent security measures and organized protection for female candidates was lacking during the 2009 elections, making it difficult for women to pursue their campaigns.

Ahead of parliamentary elections slated for May 22, experts worry that Afghanistan's perilous security situation will again endanger female voters and candidates. The Taliban threatened to punish Afghans casting ballots in the presidential election, and the fear is that this year's vote will provoke a second wave of intimidation, or even potential attacks on government and civilian targets.

A political balancing act

Dr. Khalatbari said the upcoming vote would serve a very important purpose. "The next parliamentary election in Afghanistan is a very special litmus test for the future of the country," he told Deutsche Welle.

Meanwhile, Afghan women's political way forward remains uncertain, particularly as Karzai's government plans to push for reconciliation talks with Taliban leaders by reintegrating former fighters. Both German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and US government officials have indicated support for dialog between the Afghan government and moderate members of the Taliban.

In his inauguration speech on November 19, President Karzai pledged to make addressing the insurgency his main goal. Though women's rights advocates acknowledge the need to improve security in Afghanistan, they worry that talks with the Taliban could reverse the gains achieved both by and for women in political and public life since 2001.

For their part, Afghanistan's female parliamentarians insist that any negotiation strategy should not allow for a compromise on women’s rights.

"Afghanistan cannot go back to its previous life," lawmaker Shinkai Karokhail said. "We have to go forward."

Author: Amanda Price
Editor: Rob Mudge