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Mavis Leno is beating the drums again.
The worsening situation of women in Afghanistan has kept Leno, the wife of "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno, busy on the speaker circuit.
Leno has been using her celebrity and money to champion the cause of ending "gender apartheid" in Afghanistan since 1998, two years after the Taliban gained power in the country and began imposing restrictions on how women could dress, what jobs they could hold and how much education they could receive.
It was a fight that seemed to turn a corner when the Taliban was ousted in 2002 by the U.S. invasion and things began to improve for women. But then the war in Iraq started, and things began to get worse again for women in Afghanistan.
"Everybody's focus was shifted to Iraq. All the money was shifted to Iraq," Leno said in a phone interview from Los Angeles.
"The reality is that we have wasted billions of dollars in the end in Iraq and had those same monies gone to Afghanistan, into the programs we promised them we'd implement, we would have substantially contributed to the birth of a democracy that was wanted and desired by those people."
Instead, Taliban supporters and regional warlords and drug traffickers have filled the power vacuum, Leno said, continuing to oppress women.
"Girls' schools are being burned down, and students are being threatened on the way to school to the point where many are afraid to attend anymore," Leno said. "There are lots of pockets of the country where conservative Taliban views hold sway."
It's been a long fight for Leno, who is a board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation, an organization founded in 1987 by Eleanor Smeal to empower women in decision-making arenas. Leno had fought for women's rights in the 1970s, but in 1998 she was looking to focus her energies on a small, proactive cause. She was especially interested in helping women in other countries.
"I felt that feminism was dropping the ball on that," she said. "We had enough women with power and money to stretch a hand out and help women who were at the start of that road."
The Feminist Majority Foundation took up the cause of women in Afghanistan in mid-1997, but its campaign wasn't making much noise. Then, Leno stepped in.
"Not much progress was being made, so Ellie said, I don't know what we're going to do to get this moving.' I found myself jumping up out of my seat saying,I'll take this on!'" Leno said.
In March 1998, Leno spoke about the issue at a forum in Washington D.C. sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein. In October of that year, Leno and her husband contributed $100,000 to the campaign and she became its chair. She enlisted other celebrities to join the cause and began building coalitions with politicians.
For a woman whose husband is an ardent supporter of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's ironic to hear Leno speak enthusiastically about her Washington allies, well-known liberals including Joe Biden, Barbara Boxer and Feinstein.
But she won't paint this as a liberal vs. conservative issue. "Really, it doesn't take much to see that saving this country is an urgent thing to do," Leno said. "A lot of politicians who weren't interested in this have come on board."
Leno's fight continues, but she said "the light at the end of the tunnel is that this is an entirely doable thing.
"If we don't draw a line in the sand here as women, when do we ever say this is too much?"
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(c) 2006, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.). Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.
