Evacuation form Afghanistan- women?

[Aprilinspringtimeshower]

So saw this article and the accompanying photo www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/17/afghanistan-striking-image-appears-to-show-640-people-fleeing-kabul-in-packed-us-military-plane?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

This is what concerns me- where are the women? The overwhelming majority of people on that plane are men, adult males. There are a few women and some children.
Yet it is the women who are in greatest danger. Young girls, older women. Single women who won’t be able to support themselves once stopped from going outside unaccompanied, professional women who will be banned from working .

Everyone said that the war was about women’s right and way of life. And that what is happening now is a danger to the rights and well-being of women.

Surely it is women who are the ones that need to get out of the country safely and be offered asylum- so where are they? Why wasn’t that plane full of mostly women or even equal amounts of women and the men that accompany them.

I don’t hear the government saying anything to target protection and refuge for women specifically. And to young girls and women who are in real danger

AIBU that it is always the men that get the preference, and that really no one cares enough to actually provide proper protection to the women and girls ..it’s just all sound bites and noble words

Such a shame that photo was heavily cropped to appeal to the gammonista and people who think young men barely into their 20s should be left to die.
Here's the original. I hope all of those on the plane and many more reach safety.

I do not believe anyone here thinks it right that men of any age should be left to die.

The question is why does it not feel as outrageous that the women and children are actually being left behind?
Somehow if we left these men behind it would be an absolute scandal but leaving a majority of women behind can be considered collateral damage. Somehow the women didn't do the right jobs, didn't suffer enough, weren't official enough or have the right connections to be important enough to be rescued or for it to be a scandal that not enough of them would make it out.

And yes I saw that pic. It unfortunately is difficult to weigh that picture against the stream of fleeing men that we've witnessed over the past few days.

And as you say, no one wants to get on a military aircraft and still not be safe. I wish them all safe journeys and good luck in the next part of their lives. It's not going to be easy.

How fucking dare you judge those who are fleeing for their lives. What gives you that right? If you're so concerned about the fate of women in Afghanistan go and help instead of sitting in your privilege casting judgement on those who had to choose between leaving everything behind or being executed for daring to try and change their country.

Well said. Some people on this thread are extremely lacking in imagination and empathy. They have absolutely no idea what life is like for people in a country such as Afghanistan, and I would really like to know exactly what is is they are doing to help. Some of you live in such bubbles of privilege and seem unable to understand how very different life is for others and how things are never as black and white as they think.

Could it simply be a fact that women and girls are systematically controlled by the extreme Islamist medieval barbaric cavemen as second class being deliberately forced and kept indoors as if slaves? I understand education for girls is prohibited and they are forced into sexual slavery by the Taliban extremists against their will from a very young age in forced marriages like those found throughout this region including neighbouring developing south Asia Indian subcontinent etc. Only a few brainwashed girls from parts of inner city east London and other large European cities want to escape there to join their crusade as child brides (as widely reported on in global mainstream news media).

To the poster saying the men in their lives would never leave them, even if it meant certain death - you simply cannot know this and it's not a fair statement to make.

@ResIpsaLoquiturInterAlia

Could it simply be a fact that women and girls are systematically controlled by the extreme Islamist medieval barbaric cavemen as second class being deliberately forced and kept indoors as if slaves? I understand education for girls is prohibited and they are forced into sexual slavery by the Taliban extremists against their will from a very young age in forced marriages like those found throughout this region including neighbouring developing south Asia Indian subcontinent etc. Only a few brainwashed girls from parts of inner city east London and other large European cities want to escape there to join their crusade as child brides (as widely reported on in global mainstream news media).

The Taliban isn't ISIS. You're talking about ISIS. I'm not aware of brainwashed girls from London leaving to join the Taliban! It's never been a thing.

@redtshirt50

To the poster saying the men in their lives would never leave them, even if it meant certain death - you simply cannot know this and it's not a fair statement to make.

Everyone's a hero in their shower imaginations. Reality is fundamentally different. None of us can aay at all how they would behave in situation facing death or a serious threat unless they've been it in. Then their guess can be more accurate. Doesn't stop peoppe trying to make themselves look like better humans with "I would neveeeer"tho.

@Mandalay246

How fucking dare you judge those who are fleeing for their lives. What gives you that right? If you're so concerned about the fate of women in Afghanistan go and help instead of sitting in your privilege casting judgement on those who had to choose between leaving everything behind or being executed for daring to try and change their country.

Well said. Some people on this thread are extremely lacking in imagination and empathy. They have absolutely no idea what life is like for people in a country such as Afghanistan, and I would really like to know exactly what is is they are doing to help. Some of you live in such bubbles of privilege and seem unable to understand how very different life is for others and how things are never as black and white as they think.

I know. The fucking arrogance of it. To look at pictures of terrified people escaping death and brutality and criticise them for not fleeing in a way that is culturally palatable to us.

Let me be very clear. I want to see women coming out of Afghanistan. I want us to somehow find a way to extract every women with a price on her head, and as many other women as we possibly can. When I think of Afghanistan, it's women I immediately think of, not men. It's not that I don't care about the men, but it's the women who are at the forefront of my mind.

But my concerns for the female population as a whole, and for the specific high-risk women whose stories we have heard, have nothing to do with the pictures of men being evacuated, or the response to those pictures. It's being treated as an either/or calculation, as if those specific men could have given up their places on the plane to specific women. It wouldn't have happened. If someone had refused their place, those processing the applications would have moved onto the next person in line. Who would probably have been a man, for various reasons, including a whole load of sexism.

We probably could have got a lot of women out of there. We fucked up, and in doing so put most of them out of reach. The women on that plane are no doubt the ones with the right qualifications or connections and who lived close enough to the airport to get there. There will be high-profile women all over the country who should, morally, have been on one of those planes, but who had no hope of getting there or fighting through the red tape and restrictions to get a place.

There's a shitload of sexism and women being thrown under the bus going on, but the lack of women in those pictures is almost certainly not the fault of the men in those pictures. Most immediately, it's the fault of those who created a society in which those women felt safe to stick their heads above the parapet and then fucked off without putting any sort of structure in place to give them a chance of saving themselves.

Maybe that's what's behind all the outrage. People look at those pictures and see someone convenient they can blame instead of looking at our own country's culpability and incompetence. Some of the students in that visa fuck-up were women. We could have got them out. We didn't. We didn't give enough of a shit about them to follow through on a promise we made to them. Not enough time to process their applications? Fuck right off.

So...

It's the fault of those who encouraged women to put their head above the parapet but nothing to do with a culture that already traps women?
You don't think the culture itself needs work?

" the original unfairness in the system is permeating through the rescue"

Says it all

Great posts Femme Perdue.

Women are controlled by so many layers and in so many ways within the system and within their own family.

One girls story in the financial Times said, the person she and her mum and sisters are dreading knocking on the door now the wedge of American protection has gone is : her uncle.

The uncle who engaged her to her cousin when she was 12.

@FemmePerdue

I do not believe anyone here thinks it right that men of any age should be left to die.

The question is why does it not feel as outrageous that the women and children are actually being left behind?
Somehow if we left these men behind it would be an absolute scandal but leaving a majority of women behind can be considered collateral damage. Somehow the women didn't do the right jobs, didn't suffer enough, weren't official enough or have the right connections to be important enough to be rescued or for it to be a scandal that not enough of them would make it out.

And yes I saw that pic. It unfortunately is difficult to weigh that picture against the stream of fleeing men that we've witnessed over the past few days.

And as you say, no one wants to get on a military aircraft and still not be safe. I wish them all safe journeys and good luck in the next part of their lives. It's not going to be easy.

What is the point of outrage when there’s no alternative? From an emotional point of view I think yes - there should be more women. And because of my background I find it appalling that most escapees will at least be our equivalent of middle class. Educated, privileged. If you’re poor you’re fucked just like everywhere else.

However from a practical point of view - what else do you expect them to do? Actively seek out women? Turn away the men who’d worked for them? Create some sort of safe passage (if possible they’d have done that)

I’d much rather be outraged at the governments (including our own) that have caused this. And left people to squabble over scraps.

Women are not MORE at risk than men. The risk to women is awful, but tell the men facing brutal execution that they aren't as at risk as their female relatives.

@FemmePerdue

And to be clear for those who don't get it: a lot of women will be connected to the westerners in some way for example as maids, cleaners or nannies. You most likely have never heard of how dangerous life is about to become for them. Their roles were most likely not story worthy. A different type of glass ceiling. Their stories are not going to be told by their men - until their men are safe.

So the taliban are looking for revenge. They can go after interpreters who helped the enemy possibly doing things like translating in interrogations of taliban prisoners or they can go after someone who cleaned the toilets in an embassy. I wonder who they would hunt down first?

@Balonzette

Women are not MORE at risk than men. The risk to women is awful, but tell the men facing brutal execution that they aren't as at risk as their female relatives.

Women as a population might be more at risk, specific people who have performed certain roles will be at most risk.

Women as a population might be more at risk, specific people who have performed certain roles will be at most risk

I agree. And when it is us who put those people in those roles, do we abandon them or do all we can for their safety?

Which of course can only mean prioritising them for evacuation

Article in the Washington Post on this subject

www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/08/17/women-flight-refugees-afghanistan-kabul/

Dincin that article is behind a pay wall.

Very very sad picture of a woman attacked and left on the ground today, surrounded by men and not one helping her, cradling her head

I guess I still had my free article then. The article is explaining, as many posters on here have, why there are more men fleeing compared to women.

That it is not true that men are largely simply 'abandoning' women. More likely that they are setting things in motion to try to help women and children reach safety in the future.

That gender inequalities, particularly in Afghanistan, often meant that is younger men who are sent to support the families they had to leave.

Yep, do you ever notice how men's rights activists always bring up the whole titanic thing and 'women and children first' and how oppressed they are because of this..........

Having said that, everyone in that country deserves to get out, men included

I don't think anyone here is "men's rights activist".
It's not activism to point out that these particular men and many others are in risk of life and that everyone in there is fucked

[quote DuncinToffee]Article in the Washington Post on this subject

www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/08/17/women-flight-refugees-afghanistan-kabul/[/quote]
This article is 95% conjecture.

Not one actual bloody fact or reporting.

And written by a man.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

I don't think anyone here is "men's rights activist". It's not activism to point out that these particular men and many others are in risk of life and that everyone in there is fucked

yeah, I wasn't talking about people on this thread, I was talking generally as a response to OP and what they were saying

This article is 95% conjecture.

It’s not, it’s based on statistical evidence.

Not one actual bloody fact or reporting

See above - it quotes real, evidence based figures and everything.

And written by a man

Must be wrong then. He is a specialist in international refugee law and immigration economics which means there’s a good chance he knows more about the subject than you or me.

If you have a son and a daughter the son will be beheaded by the Taliban because he has been involved with the government military this is an absolute

Your daughter married off

Who do you choose to leave the country

Plus a deep rotted belief that your son can survive in another country alone but your daughter can’t without her family around her

That is what the choice is for many families it’s about survival not who will have the easier life

We can’t view it from our perspective as it’s not a choice we shall ever have to make

It is a deeply misogynistic society but for families choices are being made about who will survive not who will suffer more

Those of you criticising the men have no idea of their personal circumstances, the dangers they would have faced if they had stayed and how they came to get a place on that plane. As many people have pointed out, they are likely to be those who were in immediate danger of being executed.

It's such typical western behaviour to make assumptions and judge like this. These people are living through a hell which you will hopefully never come close to experiencing. Maybe instead of sitting around complaining on forums about stuff you don't know about, perhaps you could look into ways of actually helping women and girls in Afghanistan by donating etc.