Material from: openixxx.ru
Fatima was 15 when she launched her own business—a construction company in war-torn Afghanistan. On a visit to New York, after graduating from Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Women program, she talked about the future of her country, and the challenges ahead.
At an age when other kids have barely graduated from the lemonade stand, Fatima started her own business. She was 15 years old—and headstrong. Not only did she choose a line of work not normally associated with teenage girls—heavy-duty construction work—but she started her company in Afghanistan, the war-torn country where she'd grown up.
Today, eight years later, Fatima—an engaging, clear-spoken woman now 23—employs 76 engineers and construction workers who are spread out across Afghanistan's restive provinces. And although she is reluctant to talk dollars and cents, it is clear that her business—rebuilding her country's roads, among other things—is booming.
Almost a decade into the U.S. occupation, Afghanistan remains a country infested by corruption and riddled by a lack of reliable electricity and infrastructure. There is also the ever-present threat of kidnapping and violence. And for women in Afghanistan, the future is especially uncertain.
“If the U.S. leaves,” Fatima predicted, “the situation will be very bad.”
After a Wednesday luncheon in New York to honor graduates of Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Women program in Afghanistan, Fatima spoke on a panel with Dina Powell of Goldman Sachs and Gayle Lemmon, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow and contributor to The Daily Beast. Tina Brown, founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, moderated the panel.
“It's hard enough to launch a new business anywhere—but try doing it in a place where, thanks to decades of war, pretty much everything is imported, where women are constrained by their culture—frequently not allowed to work outside the home, or travel without a male escort,” Brown said. She added that Fatima and three other Afghan women who took part in the event—Masooda, Malalai, and a second Fatima—had all overcome those obstacles. (The Afghan women could only be identified by their first names because of security concerns.)
“Every morning, stand in front of the mirror and say, 'I am a woman and I am powerful.'”
In Washington, there has been much talk about July 2011—the date that President Barack Obama has set as the deadline for the beginning of American military withdrawal.
But what that means for Afghan women, such as Fatima, is rarely discussed in foreign-policy circles. And women have not been invited to sit at the table during much debated reconciliation talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, even though one of the original fig leafs for the U.S. invasion was the liberation of Afghan women. As Lemmon wrote recently: “The question Afghan women ask now is: In the world's rush for an exit from their war-scarred nation, will they again lose their rights?”
“It's very, very hard right now,” said Powell, who runs the 10,000 Women campaign, adding that the Afghan women's hope and courage “need to be doubly recognized” because of it.
Doing business in Afghanistan as a woman is complicated not only by security and logistics but also by traditional gender roles. Many women find they have to take on a male business partner as the meet-and-greet required by marketing products carry stigma for a woman—and possible danger. “I get treated as a second-rate person,” said Fatima, later adding that she had not been threatened directly but had received several anonymous emails warning her that it wasn't right for a woman to do what she was doing.
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