Novelist Bina Shah of Pakistan.There was a terrific article by novelist Bina Shah in the April 28 New York Times opinion pages titled “Afghan Women: What the West Gets Wrong” describing the complexity of gender rights in Afghanistan. Far from being “silent and passive victims of their culture, their men and their politics,” Shah wrote, quoting Spogmai Akseer of the University of Toronto,the women of Afghanistan see themselves as “brave, capable and strong…they want more freedoms, of course, but they want to be active participants in their own liberation and set their own pace for the struggle.” This struggle is explored by my documentary, Mightier Than The Sword — about how the media is a platform for strong capable women to begin to assert rights on their own terms, “instead of having Westerners speak on their behalf,” which was one of the early failings of Western feminists.
