With All Our Strength.

This reading was filled with a very large amount of information. However, it focused mainly on RAWA which is an organization designed advocate and fight for peace, democracy and rights among women. It also provided a large amount of information about Meena who is considered to be the founder of the organization and who is responsible for a large amount of change that has taken place for Afghan women.

When reading the section about culture, Islam and also gender I became very interested. I found it very interesting that an Afghan woman in actually equivalent to one half of a man. So, in the case of a testimony two Afghan women would be needed to formulate a complete testimony because they are only considered to be a full man. I also found it interesting that the life expectancy for a woman is much less than that of a man. This is only true for a few other countries. This is primarily because women receive medical treatments last, food last and receive very little care prenatally


The story of the 9 year old girl who got raped was also one that was interesting to me. In this story, the 9 year old girl did in fact get raped and was not longer considered to be a virgin. As a result of this, dishonor was brought to her family and could only be restored if she married the rapist. In other words as long as her honor and that of her family is maintained by her marrying the man who raped her, the raping is a non-event.