{"id":2696,"date":"2011-05-09T10:56:38","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T10:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/what_bin_laden_s_death_means_to_women\/"},"modified":"2020-07-07T10:58:51","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T10:58:51","slug":"what_bin_laden_s_death_means_to_women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/what_bin_laden_s_death_means_to_women\/","title":{"rendered":"What Bin Laden’s death means to women – National Consumers League"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director<\/strong><\/p>\n

When President Obama went on TV to announce that Osama bin Laden had been killed by American Navy Seals, I was in Los Angeles at NCL\u2019s national LifeSmarts competitions. Over the last few days I\u2019ve been thinking about why this is such a critically important event for me, my friends, and colleagues. After all, as the Executive Director of the National Consumers League, I\u2019m a consumer advocate and a labor supporter; we don\u2019t work on foreign policy issues unless they affect child labor. Last I checked, Al Qaeda\u2019s issues weren\u2019t affecting child labor issues. So, how could his death have any real relevance to what we do at NCL?<\/p>\n

But last Monday night, as I met three other working women in Phoenix for dinner to prepare for an important meeting the next day, I realized the answer to why bin Laden\u2019s death is so significant: because a world ruled by bin Laden and his followers in Al Qaeda represents a life of repression and subjugation for women and girls.\u00a0 That my colleagues and I have the freedom to pursue careers, travel, raise children and earn a living is a world unknown to the women in bin Laden\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

In fact, bin Laden took refuge in Afghanistan when it was run by the Taliban, the notorious regime that, immediately upon taking power, forbade girls to go to school<\/a>. Bin Laden had a close working relationship with Al Qaeda. Under the Taliban, women were barred from working outside the home, precipitating a crisis in healthcare and education. Women were also prohibited from leaving their home without a male relative\u2014those that did so risked being beaten, even shot, by officers of the “ministry for the protection of virtue and prevention of vice.” A woman caught wearing fingernail polish may have had her fingertips chopped off.<\/a> All this, according to the Taliban, was to safeguard women and their honor.<\/p>\n

So the death of Osama bin Laden means that the key iconic leader of this repressive, anti-American political movements gone. So as four working women \u2013 my three dinner companions were all very accomplished women –\u00a0 sat at a lovely Phoenix restaurant on Monday and discussed the news of Osama\u2019s death, I took satisfaction in the freedoms we women in the Western world enjoy but so often don’t stop to appreciate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director When President Obama went on TV to announce that Osama bin Laden had been killed by American Navy Seals, I was in Los Angeles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2696"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11039,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions\/11039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}