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Fauzia Gailani

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Afghan politician (born 1971)
Fauzia Gailani
Member of the Wolesi Jirga
In office
2005–unknown
ConstituencyHerat Province
Personal details
Born1971 (age 52–53)
OccupationLegislator

Fauzia Gailani was elected to represent Herat Province in Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of its National Legislature, in 2005. She won almost 16,885 votes, more than any other candidate in Herat.

Prior to her election Fauzia, a mother of six, had established a chain of fitness centers. She belongs to the Gailani ethnic Pashtun family of Afghanistan. Fauzia has spoken out against violence against women, and has spoken out against forced marriages for girls. She herself was forced to marry, at thirteen years of age. She was widely quoted following the murder of Nadia Anjuman, a young Afghan poet whose husband was arrested for her death after admitting hitting her following an argument.

The Congressional Research Service described Fauzia as one of the independent representatives whose support the Hamid Karzai administration was struggling to win.

References

  1. "Profile: Herat Profile" (PDF). Navy Postgraduate School. 2009.
  2. Homeyra Mokhtarzada. "The Transition Ends and the Work Begins". Ace Project. Retrieved 2010-06-13. In Herat province, the top vote winner was a woman: Fauzia Gailani. A candidate for the Wolesi Jirga, she won 16,885 votes, or 3.6 percent of the provincial total. A mother of six who started a chain of fitness clubs in Herat after the fall of the Taliban, she has become well known for her rhetoric on equal rights and against child marriage.
  3. ^ Kim Barker (2005-11-06). "A conservative Afghan city elects a woman". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2010-06-13. Her life started out much like those of other Herat women. At age 13, while she still played with dolls, she was forced to marry a man who was 15 years older. She was his second wife. But after moving to Iran during Afghanistan's wars, Gailani fell in love with sports. She started exercising and worked at a gym for women. When her family moved back to Herat after the Taliban fell, she brought two carloads of equipment to start gyms for women in Herat.
  4. M. Ashraf Haidari (2005-10-27). "Afghanistan's Parliamentary Election Results Confirm Stunning Gains for Women". Eurasianet. Archived from the original on 2011-06-11. Retrieved 2010-06-13. Fauzia Gailani got 17,000 votes in Herat, and Malai Joya got 8,000 votes in Farah. With Shukria of Kabul, these women have emerged as icons of this landmark parliamentary election. They demonstrated that, given the chance, the women of Afghanistan can and will be full players in the reconstruction process of our country.
  5. Larry Jay Diamond, Marc F. Plattner (2006). Electoral systems and democracy. JHU Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-8474-0. Retrieved 2010-06-13. Female representation was the only area in which SNTV actually proved to have a positive effect. The quota mechanism, which ensured that a total of 68 women were elected (on average two per province), remained largely unchallenged. The fragmenting effect of SNTV helped 19 women -- 8 percent of all MPs -- get elected in their own right without the aid of the affirmative-action mechanisms. In the large Western province of Herat, for example, female candidate Fauzia Gailani out-polled all male candidates, including those backed by local warlords.
  6. Homeyra Mokhtarzada (2005). "The Transition ends, and the work begins". Democracy at Large. Retrieved 2010-06-13. In Herat province, the top vote winner was a woman: Fauzia Gailani. A candidate for the Wolesi Jirg, she won 16,885 votes, or 3.6 percent of the provincial total. A mother of six who started a chain of fitness clubs in Herat after the fall of the Taliban, she has become well known for her rhetoric on equal rights and against child marriage.
  7. Christina Lamb (2005-11-13). "Woman poet 'slain for her verse'". The Times. Archived from the original on February 9, 2007. Retrieved 2010-06-13. One of the most surprising results announced earlier in the count was in Herat, where Fauzia Gailani, a female aerobics instructor, topped the polls. The 32-year-old mother of six said she was outraged by Anjuman's death and was compiling a list of such cases. 'In Islam no one has the right to hit their wife,' she said. 'We hope the government will take action and stop crimes like this.'
  8. "Foreign Press Centers" (PDF).
  9. Kenneth Katzmann (2009-01-06). "Post-Conflict Political Transition and Political Landscape" (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved 2010-06-13. Karzai and the UF often battle for the support of the many "independents" in the lower house. Among them are several outspoken women, intellectuals, and business leaders, such as 37 yearold Malalai Joya (Farah Province), a leading critic of war-era faction leaders... Others in this camp include Ms. Fauzia Gailani (Herat Province); Ms. Shukria Barekzai, editor of Woman Mirror magazine; and Mr. Ramazan Bashardost, a former Karzai minister who champions parliamentary powers. U.S.-based International Republican Institute (IRI) has helped train the independents; the National Democratic Institute (NDI) has assisted the more established factions.

External links

Media related to Fauzia Gailani at Wikimedia Commons

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