Nowhere have women been more excluded from decision-making than in the military and foreign affairs. When it comes to the military and questions of nuclear disarmament, the gender gap becomes the gender gulf.

I have been studying women’s political behavior since the early 1970s and first identified the gender gap in 1980 with the help of legendary pollster Louis Harris.

We have so few women in Congress. We are so underrepresented and whether we like it or not, we are in area - in an era that still the women, the handful that are there, have two jobs: they represent the constituency that they're from, and they also represent the women of the nation or the state or sometimes as Maloney has done, of the world.

I mean, how many men would have gone on to the floor of the House as Carolyn Maloney did and wear a burkha to show the fight of Afghan women.

I'm not going to say that all the cabinet appointments of the men and women, you know, obviously we might have some reservations on some, but the women's movement has congratulated them for some of the appointments and is urging and encouraging more women in the Executive Branch and high areas.

Since the 1950s (until the early 1990s), girls in Kabul and other cities attended schools. Half of university students were women, and women made up 40 percent of Afghanistan’s doctors, 70 percent of its teachers and 30 percent of its civil servants. A small number of women even held important political posts as members of Parliament and judges. Most women did not wear the burqa.

Since 1996, the Feminist Majority Foundation has been immersed in a campaign to support Afghan women and girls in their fight against the brutal oppression of the Taliban.