Afghan-American Pushes For Women's Rights

By Rebecca Sheir

The founder of an Afghan women's rights organization in Falls Church, Virginia, is using the recent presidential election in her home country to promote her cause.

When Nasrine Gross isn't advocating for Afghan women's rights in Afghanistan, shes doing the same thing in the United States like at a recent panel discussion at the University of Maryland College Park.

For a husband to acknowledge that somebody is his wife is taboo," she says. "They sometimes call them, 'oh, my furniture' or 'the camel'."

Gross explains how, as a volunteer with the Abdullah Abdullah campaign, she was in charge of investigating fraud in eight provinces where, she says, "there were not even 100 women who went to vote, and yet there were hundreds of thousands of votes in their names for President Karzai. I am totally disgusted."

Gross seeks to encourage Afghan women to speak up for themselves. As founder of The Roquia Center in Falls Church, VA, she runs literacy programs in rural Afghanistan. But she'll only take married couples as pupils. She says it promotes peace at home and equality in society.