• "Gender mainstreaming cannot happen in the field until men believe in it."
• "Gender equality and gender mainstreaming lead to prosperity for everyone, man and woman."
• "Gender is not just a social issue. It is a very important issue in terms of the economy."
• "Millions of dollars are wasted because women cannot fully participate in education in Afghanistan. Women cannot fulfill the duties they should be doing for their communities. The community is being denied their talent and resources."
• "Afghanistan CANNOT move forward without the participation of women."
• "All that is needed is the strong political determination to do it."
• "The main problem is implementation in the field."
• "I see many men sitting separately from the women here. This should not be, not at a gender mainstreaming workshop."
• "Talent and knowledge should determine opportunity."
• "We have to change mentalities in our government offices. We must be a model for what we want to happen in the field."

But... it turns out the organizers had made a very big, incorrect assumption: that because some *Ministers* had signed off on the strategy, provided copies to their staff, and directed some key staff members to participate in this workshop, everyone believes in everything the aforementioned speaker talked about. It's just those folks out in the provinces that aren't hip to the whole gender equity thing.

WRONG.

After all sorts of missteps and mishaps and confusion about what was going to happen next that prompted half of the attendees to leave and go do more interesting things, the remaining attendees were divided into groups and supposed to work on... well, it doesn't matter what we were supposed to work on. What matters is that in my group, most of which were Afghan men, it emerged that most of them did NOT support this gender mainstreaming idea. Most of the men in my group do NOT believe in gender equity. They were there because their supervisors told them to be there. Period. One man said that the situation for women was MUCH better before things like the Ministry of Women's Affairs ever came along, and that men and women all long for those days. Another man - from the women's ministry, in fact -- said that if the concerns of men were addressed, that would mean the concerns of women would be addressed, because they are the same - no need to separate them out. All agreed that there's no need for other ministries - for Justice, for Refugees, for Finance, etc. - to be concerned with women's affairs, as such was the sole responsibility of the women's ministry. So much for *mainstreaming*.

And here's the kicker: I defended those men to the workshop organizers. Yes, ME. No, really. I did. I defended them because the organizers had made such off-base assumptions about the beliefs of the attendees, and that ticked me off. Haven't the organizers lived in this country even *longer* than *me*? One of the facilitators kept saying, "But they have copies of the strategy! They've received the strategy! Their ministers have signed off on it!" And I kept saying, "You can't make someone believe something just because you give him a copy of the document!" So there I was, telling the facilitators, "No, you have to write this down, you have to include his comments in your report. This is what he believes. You have to represent that. They do NOT buy what you are promoting." And the Afghan guys were so appreciative of me making sure that their completely sexist, archaic views were represented that they asked me to present their comments to the entire room at the end of the workshop.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone... yes, I did it. And I could see the organizers fuming. And I wanted to scream, "I don't freakin' believe this cr*p! But you can't ignore these people even if they think like cavemen!!" But I didn't. I finished the presentation and walked back to the table, got thanked by the guys, and then left. And went to a grocery store, then marched back to my guest house (I was still at Assa 2) - no one dared abduct me, because I would have killed them. It was written all over my face. Even the street beggers stayed away.

You should still fear me.

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