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Women essentially became invisible in the Islamic fundamentalist society, forced to wear head-to-toe burkas and live in homes with the windows painted opaque so no one could see in.
Mavis Leno described Tuesday how she became a voice for women’s rights in Afghanistan — and how anyone has the ability to stand up for a cause they believe in — during the 11th annual Women’s Fund Fall Luncheon.
Despite the Afghan government making great strides post-Sept. 11, 2001, Taliban control unfortunately now is creeping back in the country, Leno said. Meanwhile, the U.S. has shifted focus and money from Afghanistan to Iraq.
The wife of “The Tonight Show” host, Jay Leno, said she was compelled to fight for the rights of Afghan women starting in the 1990s because she thought feminists were dropping the ball on efforts abroad.
Leno grew frustrated with herself at times because she didn’t believe she could do anything to help. She then began to focus on what she could do, rather than what she couldn’t.
“Here are these women trapped in houses in an unbelievable nightmare,” she said. “They don’t even know if anyone knows about them.”
Leno first realized people would listen to her when she attended a conference with the president of Unocal, then headquartered in the U.S., as it made plans to build an oil pipeline in Afghanistan. The Taliban stood to benefit from the project, she said, both financially and through its members working on the pipeline.
Leno asked Unocal’s president how they could consider building a pipeline that would bolster a regime that so badly treated women.
“If his eyes were bullets, I’d have been dead on the spot,” she said.
But her questioning paid off, as the company ultimately decided not to go through with the project, citing the situation in Afghanistan as one of its reasons, Leno said.
She also came to realize, she said, that she could use her husband’s celebrity status to gain media attention on this issue.
Leno encouraged those in the crowd to speak up for what they believe is right. It doesn’t need to be the same cause she champions, she said, but one that motivates them.
“I think the message today was about one voice and how you can make a difference,” said Kim Pretasky, a Women’s Fund board member. “She used the connections she had, and women involved with the Women’s Fund do the same thing.”
The Women’s Fund is an endowment fund within the
La Crosse Community Foundation, Pretasky said, that aims to enrich the lives of women and girls.
