Outside Reading: National Geographic "Veiled Rebellion" - Mary Ragan

I decided to read an article out of National Geographic. We would always get this magazine at home and always enjoyed at least flipping through it a little. So I read an article about Afghan women. I knew very little about what goes on and what their lives are like and can not get over what I read about and the pictures I saw. The women are treated there is just in absolute no comparison to the way we are treated. They are beaten, forced to marry at ages as young as 12. Many women often resort to suicide to escape their hardships, which doesn't even seem the right word to portray what they are going through! Family members kill each other out of revenge. There is a picture of a women who had her nose, ears and hair cut off by her husband and a women in jail because she wanted to divorce her husband who was 70 years old when she was forced to marry him when she was 12. There was a law drafted by the Afghan Parliament to get rid of violence against women, as women start to assert themselves more (p. 37). There are some women who are beginning to make their way, writing books and graduating from college even after the Taliban had banned it, and some women traveling teaching health and hygiene to other women. I just can not get over how these women have to live their lives, We are on such different wavelengths than them. And how do we help this? They deserve such better lives.

December 2010 issue