
Last June, a team of female doctors and nurses drove six hours across mountains, dry riverbeds and on unpaved roads to reach victims of a massive earthquake that had just hit eastern Afghanistan, killing more than 1,000 people.
When they got there, a day after the earthquake hit, they found the men had been treated, but the women had not. In Afghanistan’s deeply conservative society, the women had stayed inside their tents, unable to come out to get medical help and other assistance because there were no women aid workers.