If only Afghan women were men, we’d care more

In an essay written years ago, I rhetorically claimed that certain illnesses do not get enough resources because they are gender-specific — women dying or ailing, because of endometriosis for example, do not matter; sexually insecure men do.

- Nishtha Gautam

In an essay written years ago, I rhetorically claimed that certain illnesses do not get enough resources because they are gender-specific — women dying or ailing, because of endometriosis for example, do not matter; sexually insecure men do. In a different setting, this still stands true. If the Taliban behaved with men the way they do with women, all eyes would be on Afghanistan. Today, they stand normalised. The story has moved on.

The wreckage of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 keeps washing ashore, shards that refuse to settle in the depths of anonymity and indifference. They continue to prick. Like, a desolate email from an Afghan student to her professors in India. Or the video of a burqa-clad woman being whipped by a man for the crime of teaching girls in her house. Rising on the promise of peace, the Taliban has systematically erased women from the book of what-the-world-cares-for-and-acts-against.