Rhetoric Versus Reality: Prospects for Women's Rights in Post-Taliban Afghanistan

Abstract

This paper examines roles of patriarchal structures in global geopolitics and state systems in marginalizing women's perspectives and experiences. Using Afghanistan as a case study it argues that, despite the discourse of increasing women's rights, these structures, which once rendered women invisible and which now seem focused on women's issues, remain indifferent to women's conditions. It shows how the rhetoric of women's liberation and gender equality is being used to obscure the reasons for ongoing U.S. military action in Afghanistan and camouflage barriers to women's rights caused by entrenched patriarchal norms.