Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Polling Afghans


Juan Cole notes interesting and somewhat surprising responses among the Afghan people in the Asia Society poll of June 2009.
A quarter of Afghans now think there are too few jobs outside the home for women up from 2% three years ago! Some 67 percent think women should be allowed to work. (This employment for women outside her own house had been forbidden by the Taliban, even though the country is awash in widows).

Afghans, aside from a small Taliban fringe, strongly support education for women and equal rights for them under the law. Some 87% support equal opportunity for education for both sexes, and 83% favor women continuing to have the right to vote.

...

A majority of Afghans (52%) now use cell phones--a big increase over previous years.

Read it all here.

--the BB

2 comments:

The Cunning Runt said...

This flies in the face of the bigotry so freely bandied about in "certain society" in the U.S., and used to rationalize our military actions there.

Thanks for the facts and figures; we need to be armed with knowledge to lobby for an end to this madness.

Göran Koch-Swahne said...

Peace in Afghanistan!