Massouda Jalal (Afghanistan)

“Without bringing women to leadership of Afghanistan, we cannot bring fundamental change to women’s lives,” said the Honorable Massouda Jalal, a physician, former government minister and CEDPA alumna.

Massouda knows just how much the women of Afghanistan need that change.

Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. More than one mother out of every 20 will not survive pregnancy and childbirth. The Taliban is strengthening their power and there continues to be acid attacks on girls on their way to school, she says.

Massouda has fought her whole life to improve the situation in Afghanistan. She was born in the Kapisa province in the northeast of Afghanistan to a family that believed in education. She moved to Kabul to attend high school and continued her studies at Kabul University. With her degree in medicine, she became a member of the faculty at the University.

In 1996, life changed for her when the Taliban had her removed from the university. Women were only allowed to work in hospitals, so she began to practice at several of Kabul’s hospitals.

After the fall of the Taliban, Massouda made a revolutionary decision. She saw the need for someone to speak for the women of Afghanistan. She decided to run for president.

Massouda was the first woman in history to run for president of Afghanistan.

“Afghanistan would have been different if I was to become the president. I believe that the women community of the world should come together for a unity to help each other in empowerment and leadership,” she said.

In 2002, she attended CEDPA’s Institution Building Workshop. The purpose of the program was to help individual leaders create strategies for organizational sustainability (at the time she was working for the World Food Programme).

With the training she received, Massouda’s goal was to better her management skills to increase the strength of the Afghan women.

With more leadership tools under her belt and still hoping for change, Massouda ran for president again in the 2004 elections. She was one of 18 candidates and, to the surprise of many, finished ahead of many of the male candidates, coming in sixth. Her campaign was chronicled in a documentary, Frontrunner.

Though she lost, she was appointed to the cabinet of the winning candidate and became the country's Minister for Women's Affairs.

Leaving the life of politics, Massouda created the Jalal Foundation in 2007, the first women-led initiative of its type in Afghanistan’s history.

The Jalal Foundation seeks to promote, empower, educate and inform Afghani women by building their capacity in human rights, gender issues and leadership. Foundation programs educate and train women, help develop life and professional skills to heal from post-war trauma, create a platform for women’s self-expression in the media, and promote peace and women's rights.

Though Massouda says remains frustrated with the corruption of the political environment in Afghanistan, she has hope that the many educated women in her country will one day hold office. “If we cannot have a woman as president, let us at least have a woman as vice president,” she says.

March 2010