What is Driving Change in Afghanistan

The most important thing in Afghanistan has been necessity, economic hardship and the fact that women have to work. 

Women have to teach and most families nowadays have no alternative but to allow their women, their daughters, wives and so forth to go out to the workforce.  That necessity in some ways has also influenced the way women are viewed in our society and the organization of the country. 

I believe 40, 50% of the population resides in our major cities or certain small towns are now mini cities.  A small town of 100,000 individuals in 2002 now has half a million people and that I think influences people because people abandon sort of tribal clan traditions and they become city dwellers and they become more sophisticated and the education rate, which is now 30% will move up very quickly because 60% of the population is under the age of 20.

So within a generation we will see that the majority of the population will be literate and I think that will also have a huge influence on society. 

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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