title: History of rockets

text: ""Artis Magnae Artilleriae pars prima"" ("Great Art of Artillery, the First Part", also known as "The Complete Art of Artillery"), first printed in Amsterdam in 1650, was translated to French in 1651, German in 1676, English and Dutch in 1729 and Polish in 1963. For over two centuries, this work of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth nobleman Kazimierz Siemienowicz was used in Europe as a basic artillery manual. The book provided the standard designs for creating rockets, fireballs, and other pyrotechnic devices. It contained a large chapter on caliber, construction, production and properties of rockets (for both military and civil purposes), including multi-stage rockets, batteries of rockets, and rockets with delta wing stabilizers (instead of the common guiding rods).


title: History of rockets

text: In his 1696 work, ‘The Making of Rockets. In two Parts. The First containing the Making of Rockets for the meanest Capacity. The other to make Rockets by a Duplicate Proposition, to 1,000 pound Weight or higher,’ Robert Anderson proposed constructing rockets out of "a piece of a Gun Barrel" whose metal casing is much stronger than pasteboard or wood.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1792, iron-cased rockets were successfully used by Tipu Sultan - the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore (in India) against the larger British East India Company forces during the Anglo-Mysore Wars. The British then took an active interest in the technology and developed it further during the 19th century. Use of iron tubes for holding propellant enabled higher thrust and longer range for the missile (up to 2 km range).


title: History of rockets

text: After Tipu's defeat in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War and the capture of the Mysore iron rockets, they were influential in British rocket development, inspiring the Congreve rocket, which was soon put into use in the Napoleonic Wars.


title: History of rockets

text: William Congreve (1772-1828), son of the Comptroller of the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, London, became a major figure in the field. From 1801 Congreve researched the original design of Mysore rockets and started a vigorous development program at the Arsenal's laboratory. Congreve prepared a new propellant mixture, and developed a rocket motor with a strong iron tube with conical nose. This early Congreve rocket weighed about 32 pounds (14.5 kilograms). The Royal Arsenal's first demonstration of solid-fuel rockets took place in 1805. The rockets were effectively used during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. Congreve published three books on rocketry.


title: History of rockets

text: Subsequently, the use of military rockets spread throughout the western world. At the Battle of Baltimore in 1814, the rockets fired on Fort McHenry by the rocket vessel HMS "Erebus" were the source of the "rockets' red glare" described by Francis Scott Key in "The Star-Spangled Banner". Rockets were also used in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.


title: History of rockets

text: Early rockets were very inaccurate. Without the use of spinning or any controlling feedback-loop, they had a strong tendency to veer sharply away from their intended course. The early Mysorean rockets and their successor British Congreve rockets reduced veer somewhat by attaching a long stick to the end of a rocket (similar to modern bottle rockets) to make it harder for the rocket to change course. The largest of the Congreve rockets was the 32-pound (14.5 kg) Carcass, which had a 15-foot (4.6 m) stick. Originally, sticks were mounted on the side, but this was later changed to mounting them in the center of the rocket, reducing drag and enabling the rocket to be more accurately fired from a segment of pipe.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1815 Alexander Dmitrievich Zasyadko (1779-1837) began his work on developing military gunpowder-rockets. He constructed rocket-launching platforms (which allowed firing of rockets in salvos - 6 rockets at a time) and gun-laying devices. Zasyadko elaborated a tactic for military use of rocket weaponry. In 1820 Zasyadko was appointed head of the Petersburg Armory, Okhtensky Powder Factory, pyrotechnic laboratory and the first Highest Artillery School in Russia. He organized rocket production in a special rocket workshop and formed the first rocket sub-unit in the Imperial Russian Army.


title: History of rockets

text: Artillery captain Józef Bem (1794-1850) of the Kingdom of Poland started experiments with what was then called in Polish "raca kongrewska". These culminated in his 1819 report "Notes sur les fusees incendiares" (German edition: "Erfahrungen über die Congrevischen Brand-Raketen bis zum Jahre 1819 in der Königlichen Polnischen Artillerie gesammelt", Weimar 1820). The research took place in the Warsaw Arsenal, where captain Józef Kosiński also developed multiple-rocket launchers adapted from horse artillery gun carriage. The 1st Rocketeer Corps formed in 1822; it first saw combat during the Polish–Russian War 1830–31.


title: History of rockets

text: Accuracy greatly improved in 1844 when William Hale modified the rocket design so that thrust was slightly vectored, causing the rocket to spin along its axis-of-travel like a bullet. The Hale rocket removed the need for a rocket stick, travelled further due to reduced air-resistance, and was far more accurate.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1865 the British Colonel Edward Mounier Boxer built an improved version of the Congreve rocket by placing two rockets in one tube, one behind the other.


title: History of rockets

text: At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a burst of scientific investigation into interplanetary travel, fueled by the creativity of fiction writers such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells as well as philosophical movements like Russian cosmism. Scientists seized on the rocket as a technology that was able to achieve this in real life, a possibility first recognized in 1861 by William Leitch.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1903, high school mathematics teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935), inspired by Verne and Cosmism, published "The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices" ("The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices"), the first serious scientific work on space travel. The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation—the principle that governs rocket propulsion—is named in his honor (although it had been discovered previously, Tsiolkovsky is honored as being the first to apply it to the question of whether rockets could achieve speeds necessary for space travel). He also advocated the use of liquid hydrogen and oxygen for propellant, calculating their maximum exhaust velocity. His work was essentially unknown outside the Soviet Union, but inside the country it inspired further research, experimentation and the formation of the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel in 1924.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1912, Robert Esnault-Pelterie published a lecture on rocket theory and interplanetary travel. He independently derived Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation, did basic calculations about the energy required to make round trips to the Moon and planets, and he proposed the use of atomic power (i.e. radium) to power a jet drive.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1912 Robert Goddard, inspired from an early age by H.G. Wells and by his personal interest in science, began a serious analysis of rockets, concluding that conventional solid-fuel rockets needed to be improved in three ways. First, fuel should be burned in a small combustion chamber, instead of building the entire propellant container to withstand the high pressures. Second, rockets could be arranged in stages. Finally, the exhaust speed (and thus the efficiency) could be greatly increased to beyond the speed of sound by using a De Laval nozzle. He patented these concepts in 1914. He also independently developed the mathematics of rocket flight.


title: History of rockets

text: Goddard worked on developing solid-propellant rockets since 1914, and demonstrated a light battlefield rocket to the US Army Signal Corps only five days before the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. He also started developing liquid-propellant rockets in 1921, yet he had not been taken seriously by the public. Nevertheless, Goddard reclusively developed and flew a small liquid-fueled rocket. He developed the technology for 214 patents, 212 of which his wife published after his death.


title: History of rockets

text: During World War I Yves Le Prieur, a French naval officer and inventor, later to create a pioneering scuba diving apparatus, developed air-to-air solid-fuel rockets. The aim was to destroy observation captive balloons (called saucisses or Drachens) used by German artillery. These rather crude black powder, steel-tipped incendiary rockets (made by Ruggieri) were first tested from a Voisin aircraft, wing-bolted on a fast Picard Pictet sports car and then used in battle on real aircraft. A typical layout was eight electrically fired Le Prieur rockets fitted on the interpane struts of a Nieuport aircraft. If fired at sufficiently short distance, a spread of Le Prieur rockets proved to be quite deadly. Belgian ace Willy Coppens claimed dozens of Drachen kills during World War I.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1920, Goddard published his ideas and experimental results in "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes". The work included remarks about sending a solid-fuel rocket to the Moon, which attracted worldwide attention and was both praised and ridiculed. A "New York Times" editorial suggested, referring to Newton's Third Law.


title: History of rockets

text: In reality, in terms of Newton's third law, a rocket "pushes against" its exhaust gases, so the lack of surrounding air is not relevant.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1923, German Hermann Oberth (1894–1989) published "Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen" ("The Rocket into Planetary Space"), a version of his doctoral thesis, after the University of Munich had rejected it. In 1929, he published a book, "Wege zur Raumschiffahrt ("Ways to Spaceflight")", and static-fired an uncooled liquid-fueled rocket engine for a brief time.


title: History of rockets

text: Modern rockets originated in the US when Robert Goddard attached a supersonic (de Laval) nozzle to the combustion chamber of a liquid-fueled rocket engine. This turned the hot combustion chamber gas into a cooler, highly directed hypersonic jet of gas, more than doubling the thrust and raising the engine efficiency from 2% to 64%. On 16 March 1926, Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts.


title: History of rockets

text: During the 1920s, a number of rocket research organizations appeared worldwide. Rocketry in the Soviet Union began in 1921 with extensive work at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL), where the first test-firing of a solid fuel rocket was carried out in March 1928, which flew for about 1,300 meters In 1931 the world's first successful use of rockets to assist take-off of aircraft were carried out on a , the Soviet designation for a Avro 504 trainer, which achieved about one hundred successful assisted takeoffs. Further developments in the early 1930s included firing rockets from aircraft and the ground. In 1932 in-air test firings of RS-82 missiles from an Tupolev I-4 aircraft armed with six launchers successfully took place. In September 1931 the Group for the Study of Reactive Motion (GIRD) was formed and was responsible for the first Soviet liquid propelled rocket launch, the GIRD-9, on 17 August 1933, which reached an altitude of .


title: History of rockets

text: In 1933 GDL and GIRD were merged to form the Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII) and developments were continued, including designing several variations for ground-to-air, ground-to-ground, air-to-ground and air-to-air combat. The RS-82 rockets were carried by Polikarpov I-15, I-16 and I-153 fighter planes, the Polikarpov R-5 reconnaissance plane and the Ilyushin Il-2 close air support plane, while the heavier RS-132 rockets could be carried by bombers. Many small ships of the Soviet Navy were also fitted with the RS-82 rocket, including the MO-class small guard ship. The earliest known use by the Soviet Air Force of aircraft-launched unguided anti-aircraft rockets in combat against heavier-than-air aircraft took place in August 1939, during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. A group of Polikarpov I-16 fighters under command of Captain N. Zvonarev were using RS-82 rockets against Japanese aircraft, shooting down 16 fighters and 3 bombers in total. Six Tupolev SB bombers also used RS-132 for ground attack during the Winter War. RNII also built over 100 experimental rocket engines under the direction of Valentin Glushko. Design work included regenerative cooling, hypergolic propellant ignition, and swirling and bi-propellant mixing fuel injectors. However, Glushko's arrest during Stalin's Great Purge in 1938 curtailed the developments.


title: History of rockets

text: An amateur rocket group, the VfR, co-founded by Max Valier, included Wernher von Braun, who eventually became the head of the army research station that designed the V-2 rocket weapon for the Nazis. When private rocket-engineering became forbidden in Germany, Sander was arrested by Gestapo in 1935, convicted of treason, sentenced to 5 years in prison, and forced to sell his company. He died in 1938.


title: History of rockets

text: Lieutenant Colonel Karl Emil Becker, head of the German Army's Ballistics and Munitions Branch, gathered a small team of engineers that included Walter Dornberger and Leo Zanssen, to figure out how to use rockets as long-range artillery in order to get around the Treaty of Versailles' ban on research and development of long-range cannons. Wernher von Braun, a young engineering prodigy who as an eighteen-year-old student helped Hermann Oberth build his liquid rocket engine, was recruited by Becker and Dornberger to join their secret army program at Kummersdorf-West in 1932. Von Braun dreamed of conquering outer space with rockets and did not initially see the military value in missile technology.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1927 a team of German rocket engineers, including Opel RAK's Max Valier, had formed the "Verein für Raumschiffahrt" (Society for Space Travel, or VfR), and in 1931 launched a liquid propellant rocket (using oxygen and gasoline).


title: History of rockets

text: Similar work was done from 1932 onwards by the Austrian professor Eugen Sänger, who migrated to Germany in 1936 and worked on rocket-powered spaceplanes such as Silbervogel (sometimes called the "antipodal" bomber).


title: History of rockets

text: On November 12, 1932 at a farm in Stockton NJ, the American Interplanetary Society's attempt to static-fire their first rocket (based on German Rocket Society designs) failed in a fire.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1936, a British research programme based at Fort Halstead in Kent under the direction of Dr. Alwyn Crow started work on a series of unguided solid-fuel rockets that could be used as anti-aircraft weapons. In 1939, a number of test firings were carried out in the British colony of Jamaica, on a specially built range.


title: History of rockets

text: In the 1930s, the German "Reichswehr" (which in 1935 became the "Wehrmacht") began to take an interest in rocketry. Artillery restrictions imposed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles limited Germany's access to long-distance weaponry. Seeing the possibility of using rockets as long-range artillery fire, the Wehrmacht initially funded the VfR team, but because their focus was strictly scientific, created its own research team. At the behest of military leaders, Wernher von Braun, at the time a young aspiring rocket scientist, joined the military (followed by two former VfR members) and developed long-range weapons for use in World War II by Nazi Germany.


title: History of rockets

text: In June 1938, the Soviet Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII) began developing a multiple rocket launcher based on the RS-132 rocket. In August 1939, the completed rocket was the BM-13 / Katyusha rocket launcher (BM stands for "боевая машина" (translit. "boyevaya mashina"), 'combat vehicle' for M-13 rockets). Towards the end of 1938 the first significant large scale testing of the rocket launchers took place, 233 rockets of various types were used. A salvo of rockets could completely straddle a target at a range of . Various rocket tests were conducted through 1940, and the BM-13-16 with launch rails for sixteen rockets was authorized for production. Only forty launchers were built before Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.


title: History of rockets

text: At the start of the war, the British had equipped their warships with unrotated projectile unguided anti-aircraft rockets, and by 1940, the Germans had developed a surface-to-surface multiple rocket launcher, the "Nebelwerfer".


title: History of rockets

text: The Soviet Katyusha rocket launchers were top secret in the beginning of World War II. A special unit of the NKVD troops was raised to operate them. On July 14, 1941, an experimental artillery battery of seven launchers was first used in battle at Rudnya in Smolensk Oblast of Russia, under the command of Captain Ivan Flyorov, destroying a concentration of German troops with tanks, armored vehicles and trucks at the marketplace, causing massive German Army casualties and its retreat from the town in panic. After their success in the first month of the war, mass production was ordered and the development of other models proceeded. The Katyusha was inexpensive and could be manufactured in light industrial installations which did not have the heavy equipment to build conventional artillery gun barrels. By the end of 1942, 3,237 Katyusha launchers of all types had been built, and by the end of the war total production reached about 10,000. with 12 million rockets of the RS type produced for the Soviet armed forces.


title: History of rockets

text: During the Second World War, Major-General Dornberger was the military head of the army's rocket program, Zanssen became the commandant of the Peenemünde army rocket center, and von Braun was the technical director of the ballistic missile program. They led the team that built the Aggregat-4 (A-4) rocket, which became the first vehicle to reach outer space during its test flight program in 1942 and 1943. By 1943, Germany began mass-producing the A-4 as the Vergeltungswaffe 2 ("Vengeance Weapon" 2, or more commonly, V2), a ballistic missile with a range carrying a warhead at . Its supersonic speed meant there was no defense against it, and radar detection provided little warning. Germany used the weapon to bombard southern England and parts of Allied-liberated western Europe from 1944 until 1945. After the war, the V-2 became the basis of early American and Soviet rocket designs.


title: History of rockets

text: In 1943, production of the V-2 rocket began in Germany. It had an operational range of and carried a warhead, with an amatol explosive charge. It normally achieved an operational maximum altitude of around , but could achieve if launched vertically. The vehicle was similar to most modern rockets, with turbopumps, inertial guidance and many other features. Thousands were fired at various Allied nations, mainly Belgium, as well as England and France. While they could not be intercepted, their guidance system design and single conventional warhead meant that they were insufficiently accurate against military targets. A total of 2,754 people in England were killed, and 6,523 were wounded before the launch campaign was ended. There were also 20,000 deaths of slave labour during the construction of V-2s. While it did not significantly affect the course of the war, the V-2 provided a lethal demonstration of the potential for guided rockets as weapons.


title: History of rockets

text: In parallel with the guided missile programme in Nazi Germany, rockets were also used on aircraft, either for assisting horizontal take-off (RATO), vertical take-off (Bachem Ba 349 "Natter") or for powering them (Me 163, etc.). During the war Germany also developed several guided and unguided air-to-air, ground-to-air and ground-to-ground missiles (see list of World War II guided missiles of Germany).


title: History of rockets

text: At the end of World War II, competing Russian, British, and US military and scientific crews raced to capture technology and trained personnel from the German rocket program at Peenemünde. Russia and Britain had some success, but the United States benefited the most. The US captured a large number of German rocket scientists, including von Braun, and brought them to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip. In America, the same rockets that were designed to rain down on Britain were used instead by scientists as research vehicles for developing the new technology further. The V-2 evolved into the American Redstone rocket, used in the early space program.


title: History of rockets

text: After the war, rockets were used to study high-altitude conditions, by radio telemetry of temperature and pressure of the atmosphere, detection of cosmic rays, and further research; notably the Bell X-1, the first manned vehicle to break the sound barrier. This continued in the US under von Braun and the others, who were destined to become part of the US scientific community.


title: History of rockets

text: Independently, in the Soviet Union's space program research continued under the leadership of the chief designer Sergei Korolev. With the help of German technicians, the V-2 was launched and duplicated as the R-1 missile. German designs were abandoned in the late 1940s, and the foreign workers were sent home. A new series of engines built by Glushko and based on inventions of Aleksei Mihailovich Isaev formed the basis of the first ICBM, the R-7. The R-7 launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1, and later Yuri Gagarin, the first man into space, and the first lunar and planetary probes. This rocket is still in use today. These prestigious events attracted the attention of top politicians, along with additional funds for further research.


title: History of rockets

text: One problem that had not been solved was atmospheric reentry. It had been shown that an orbital vehicle easily had enough kinetic energy to vaporize itself, and yet it was known that meteorites can make it down to the ground. The mystery was solved in the US in 1951 when H. Julian Allen and A. J. Eggers, Jr. of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) made the counterintuitive discovery that a blunt shape (high drag) permitted the most effective heat shield. With this type of shape, around 99% of the energy goes into the air rather than the vehicle, and this permitted safe recovery of orbital vehicles.


title: History of rockets

text: The Allen and Eggers discovery, initially treated as a military secret, was eventually published in 1958. Blunt body theory made possible the heat shield designs that were embodied in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Soyuz space capsules, enabling astronauts and cosmonauts to survive the fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Some spaceplanes such as the Space Shuttle made use of the same theory. At the time the STS was being conceived, Maxime Faget, the Director of Engineering and Development at the Manned Spacecraft Center, was not satisfied with the purely "lifting re-entry" method (as proposed for the cancelled X-20 "Dyna-Soar"). He designed a space shuttle which operated as a blunt body by entering the atmosphere at an extremely high angle of attack of 40° with the underside facing the direction of flight, creating a large shock wave that would deflect most of the heat around the vehicle instead of into it. The Space Shuttle used a combination of a "ballistic entry" (blunt body theory) and aerodynamic re-entry; at an altitude of about , the atmosphere becomes dense enough for the aerodynamic re-entry phase to begin. Throughout re-entry, the Shuttle rolled to change lift direction in a prescribed way, keeping maximum deceleration well below 2 gs. These roll maneuvers allowed the Shuttle to use its lift to steer toward the runway.


title: History of rockets

text: Rockets became extremely important militarily as modern intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) when it was realized that nuclear weapons carried on a rocket vehicle were essentially impossible for existing defense systems to stop once launched, and launch vehicles such as the R-7, Atlas, and Titan became delivery platforms for these weapons.


title: History of rockets

text: Fueled partly by the Cold War, the 1960s became the decade of rapid development of rocket technology particularly in the Soviet Union (Vostok, Soyuz, Proton) and in the United States (e.g. the X-15 and X-20 Dyna-Soar aircraft). There was also significant research in other countries, such as France, Britain, Japan, Australia, etc., and a growing use of rockets for Space exploration, with pictures returned from the far side of the Moon and unmanned flights for Mars exploration.


title: History of rockets

text: In America, the manned spaceflight programs, Project Mercury, Project Gemini, and later the Apollo program, culminated in 1969 with the first manned landing on the Moon using the Saturn V, causing the "New York Times" to retract its earlier 1920 editorial implying that spaceflight couldn't work:


title: History of rockets

text: In the 1970s, the United States made five more lunar landings before cancelling the Apollo program in 1975. The replacement vehicle, the partially reusable Space Shuttle, was intended to be cheaper, but no large reduction in costs was achieved. Meanwhile, in 1973, the expendable Ariane programme was begun, a launcher that by the year 2000 would capture much of the geosat market.


title: History of rockets

text: Since the early 2010s, new private options for obtaining spaceflight services emerged, bringing substantial market competition into the existing launch service provider business.


title: History of rockets

text: Initially, these market forces have manifest through competitive dynamics among payload transport capabilities at diverse prices having a greater influence on rocket launch purchasing than the traditional political considerations of country of manufacture or the particular national entity using, regulating or licensing the launch service.


title: History of rockets

text: Following the advent of spaceflight technology in the late 1950s, space launch services came into being, exclusively by national programs. Later in the 20th century commercial operators became significant customers of launch providers. International competition for the communications satellite payload subset of the launch market was increasingly influenced by commercial considerations. However, even during this period, for both commercial- and government-entity-launched commsats, the launch service providers for these payloads used launch vehicles built to government specifications, and with state-provided development funding exclusively.


title: History of rockets

text: In the early 2010s, privately developed launch vehicle systems and space launch service offerings emerged. Companies now faced economic incentives rather than the principally political incentives of the earlier decades. The space launch business experienced a dramatic lowering of per-unit prices along with the addition of entirely new capabilities, bringing about a new phase of competition in the space launch market.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Women's rights in Afghanistan have oscillated back and forth depending on the time period. After King Amanullah Khan's attempts to modernize the country in the 1920s, women officially gained equality under the 1964 Constitution. However, these rights were taken away in the 1990s through different temporary rulers such as the mujahideen and the Taliban during the Afghan civil war. During the first Taliban regime (1996–2001), women had very little to no freedom, specifically in terms of civil liberties. When the Taliban were removed from power following the 9/11 attacks in the United States, women's rights gradually improved under the presidential Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Women were "de jure" equal to men under the 2004 Constitution.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, most teenage girls were again prevented from returning to secondary school education, and women were blocked from working in most sectors outside of health and education. Women were ordered to wear face coverings in public, and barred from traveling more than without a close male relative. In July 2022, Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban's reclusive leader, lashed out at the criticism and demands of the international community on the Taliban's human rights restrictions, rejecting any negotiations or compromise on his "Islamic system" of governance.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan is in South Asia and has a population of roughly 34 million. Of these, 15 million are male and 14.2 million are female. About 22% of the Afghan people are urbanite and the remaining 78% live in rural areas. As part of local tradition, most women are married soon after completing high school. Many live as housewives for the remainder of their lives.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: During the Durrani Empire (1747-1823) and the early Barakzai dynasty Afghan women customarily lived subjected in a state of purdah and gender segregation imposed by patriarchal customs. While this was the case in all Afghanistan, the customs differed somewhat between regions and ethnic groups. Nomad women, for example, did not have to hide their faces and even showed some of their hair.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Women did not play any public role in society, however there were some women, such as Ayesha Durrani, who became noted as poets and writers, which was an art form possible for a woman to perform while living in the seclusion of the harem.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The rulers of Afghanistan customarily had a harem of four official wives as well as a large number of unofficial wives for the sake of tribal marriage diplomacy, in addition to enslaved harem women known as "kaniz" (“slave girl”) and "surati" or "surriyat" ("mistress"), guarded by the "ghulam bacha" (eunuchs). Some women had influence over the affairs of state from inside the royal harem, notably Zarghona Anaa, Mirmon Ayesha and Babo Jan.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Some Rulers of Afghanistan have attempted to increase women's freedom. Some limited reforms were made by Abdur Rahman Khan, who banned some forms of oppression originating from tribal customs rather than Islam, among them the custom of forcing widows to marry their brother-in-laws, and enforced some rights which Islam did approve of but local tribal customs did not, such as the right of widows to inherit.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Modern social reform for Afghan women began when Queen Soraya, wife of King Amanullah, made rapid reforms to improve women's lives and their position in the family, marriage, education and professional life. She founded the first women's magazine (Irshad-e Naswan, 1922), the first women's organization (Anjuman-i Himayat-i-Niswan), the first school for girls (Masturat School in 1920), the first theatre for women in Paghman and the first hospital for women (the Masturat Hospital in 1924). Queen Soraya set an example for the abolition of gender segregation by appearing with her husband, famously removing her veil in public, and her example was followed by others. The king declared that the veil was optional, permitted Western clothes in Kabul and reserved certain streets for men and women wearing modern clothes. In 1928, Amanullah sent fifteen female graduates of the Masturat middle school, daughters of the royal family and government officials, to study in Turkey. Soraya Tarzi was the only woman to appear on the list of rulers in Afghanistan, and was credited with having been one of the first and most powerful Afghan and Muslim female activists.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: However, Queen Soraya, along with her husband's, advocacy of social reforms for women led to a protest and contributed to the ultimate demise of her and her husband's reign in 1929. King Amanullah Khan's deposition caused a severe backlash, and his successor reinstated the veil and repelled the reforms in women's rights, reinforcing purdah. The Women's Association as well as the women's magazine was banned, the girls 'schools were closed, the female students who had been allowed to study in Turkey was recalled to Afghanistan and forced to put on the veil and enter purdah again, and polygamy for men was reintroduced.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Successors Mohammed Nadir Shah and Mohammed Zahir Shah acted more cautiously, but nevertheless worked for the moderate and steady improvement of women's rights Women were allowed to take classes at the Masturat Women's Hospital in Kabul in 1931, and some girls' schools were reopened; the first High School for girls was officially called a 'Nursing School' to prevent any opposition to it. While women were again forced to be veiled in public, unveiling had become accepted in private among the Afghan upper class, and it was noted that upper-class women were met at the Kabul International Airport by servants running up to the stairs of the airplane to deliver a chadar (veil) upon their arrival to Kabul from abroad, since they had not used it during their stay abroad.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: After the Second World War modernization reforms were seen as necessary by the government, which resulted in the resurrection of a state women's movement. In 1946 the government-supported Women's Welfare Association (WWA) was founded with Queen Humaira Begum as patron, giving school classes for girls and vocational classes to women, and from 1950 to 1951 women students were accepted at the Kabul University.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Following the election of Mohammed Daoud Khan as Prime Minister in 1953, social reforms giving women a more public presence were encouraged. One of his aims was to break free from the ultra-conservative, Islamist tradition of treating women as second-class citizens. During his time, he made significant advances towards modernization.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The Prime Minister prepared women's emancipation carefully and gradually. He began in 1957 by introducing women workers at the Radio Kabul and by sending women delegates to the Asian Women's Conference in Kairo, by employing forty girls to the government pottery factory, women as receptionists and telephone operators in the state Tele-Communications agency, and air hostesses at the Aryana Airlines in 1958.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: When this was met with no riots, the government decided it was time for the very controversial step of unveiling. In 1959, women employed by the state, such as radio announcers, were asked to come to their work places without the veil, instead wearing a loose coat, scarf and cloves; after that, the foreign wives, and daughters of foreign born wives, were asked to venture out on the streats in the same way, and in this way, women without the veil were started to be seen in the streets of Kabul. In August 1959, on the second day of the festival of Jeshyn, Queen Humaira Begum and Princess Bilqis appeared in the royal box at the military parade unveiled, alongside the Prime Minister's wife, Zamina Begum. A group of Islamic clerics sent a letter of protest to the Prime minister to protest and demand that the words of sharia be respected. The Prime minister answered by inviting them to the capital and present proof to him that the holy scripture indeed demanded the chadri. When the clerics could not find such a passage, the Prime Minister declared that the female members of the Royal Family would no longer wear veils because the Islamic law did not demand it. While the chadri was never banned, the example of the Queen and the Prime Minister's wife was followed by the wives and daughters of government officials as well as by other urban women of the upper class and middle class, with Kubra Noorzai and Masuma Esmati-Wardak known as the first commoner pioneers.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The 1964 Constitution of Afghanistan granted women equal rights including universal suffrage and the right to run for office. In the cities, women were able to appear unveiled, serve in public office and hold jobs as scientists, teachers, doctors, and civil servants, and they had a considerable amount of freedom with significant educational opportunities. Afghanistan had its first female cabinet ministers in the 1960s and Jameela Farooq Rooshna became the first female judge in Afghanistan (1969). Women also started appearing in media and entertainment. Rukhshana is popularly known as one of the first female Afghan pop singers, becoming well known in the 1960s, and Safia Tarzi as the first Afghan fashion designer.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: However, despite the effort of the Women's Welfare Association (WWA), the majority of women continued to be excluded from these opportunities, as these reforms had little effect outside of the cities and mainly concerned urban elite women. The countryside was a deeply patriarchal, tribal society, and the lives of rural women were not affected by the change taking place in the cities.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In 1977, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) was founded by Meena Keshwar Kamal. RAWA still operates in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (1978–1987) and the Republic of Afghanistan (1987-1992), which followed the Saur revolution that toppled the government of Mohammed Daoud Khan, was a period of unprecedented equality for women in Afghanistan. The Communist ideology officially advocated gender equality and women's rights, and the communist government sought to implement it - though without success - on all classes throughout both urban and rural Afghanistan.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In 1978, the government, led by Nur Muhammad Taraki, gave equal rights to women. This gave them the theoretical ability to choose their husbands and careers. The women's emancipation policy of the government were supported by the Democratic Women's Organisation of Afghanistan (DOAW) and later by the Afghan Women's Council (AWC), who sought to implement it. Until 1989, the AWC was led by Masuma Esmati-Wardak and run by a staff of eight women. The AWC had around 150,000 members and offices in nearly all the provinces. The AWC provided social services to women in Afghanistan, in the fight against illiteracy and provided vocational training in the secretarial, hairdressing and manufacturing fields.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: During the Communist era, women's rights were supported by both the Afghan government as well as by the Soviets who supported them. In contrast to what had been the case during the monarchy, when women's rights had been restricted to urban elite women, the Communists attempted to extend women's rights to all classes of society, also to rural women and girls.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The communist government's ideological enforcement of female emancipation in the rural areas took the form of enforced literacy campaigns for women and compulsory schooling for girls, which was heavily resisted in particularly the Pashtun tribal areas. The Communists abolished patriarchal customs still prevalent in rural areas, such as the bride price, and raised the age of consent to marriage for girls to sixteen. In rural Afghanistan, gender seclusion was a strong part of local culture. To attend school girls would have to leave home, and school was therefore seen as a deeply dishonorable thing. The policy of compulsory schooling for girls as well as boys was met with a strong backlash from the conservative rural population, and contributed to the resistance against the Soviets and the Communist regime by the Mujahideen, the Islamic guerillas.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The conservative rural population came to regard the urban population as degenerate partially because of the female emancipation, in which urban women mixed with men and participated in public life unveiled, and education for women, and by extension women's rights in general, came to be associated with Communism and atheism.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: While female emancipation was a part of the regime's policy, this policy was introduced mainly to benefit the party rather for any humanist principle. With a few exceptions, such as Anahita Ratebzad, Masuma Esmati-Wardak and Salcha Faruq Etemadi, most women were active at the low and the middle level of party hierarchy rather than the top. During the Communist regime, thousands of urban women were recruited to the cadres and militias of the PDPA party and the Democratic Women's Organisation of Afghanistan, and trained in military combat against the Mujahideen, the Islamic guerillas, and there was a concern among urban women that the reactionary fundamentalists would topple the Communist regime and the women's rights it protected.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The AWC came to symbolize women's rights in the eyes of many, who feared the sacrificing of the AWC in the national reconciliation talks which started in 1987. It is claimed that in 1991 around seven thousand women were in the institution of higher education and around 230,000 girls studying in schools around Afghanistan. There were around 190 female professors and 22,000 female teachers.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In 1992, the government under Mohammad Najibullah transitioned to the Islamic State of Afghanistan. War in Afghanistan continued into a new phase when Gulbuddin Hekmatyar started a bombardment campaign against the Islamic State in Kabul. During the violent four-year civil war, a number of women were kidnapped, and some of them were raped.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The Mujahideen had viewed the Communist regime as godless and anti Islamic partially because of the women's emancipation supported by the Communist policy, and when in power, their goal was to abolish the freedom women had enjoyed during the Communist regime in order to Islamicize society. The restrictions imposed when the Islamic State was established were "the ban of alcohol and the enforcement of a sometimes-purely-symbolic veil for women".


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: On 27 August 1993, the Government Office of Research and Decrees of the Supreme Court issued an order to government agencies and state functionaries to dismiss all women in their employ, and further decreed:


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In reality however this decree remained on paper only, since the government did not have enough control of the country to implement their desired policy. Women, thus, remained in the workplace despite the decree and the liberal provisions of the 1964 constitution were largely upheld.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: During the instable political situation in which different Islamic parties fought one another for domination, women in Kabul were abducted from their homes, jobs and offices and subjected to various forms of abuse by rivaling Mujahidin groups. Many educated women and professional women were abducted and killed because the Mujahidin considered their minds to have been poisoned.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Women began to be more restricted after Hekmatyar was integrated into the Islamic State as Afghan Prime Minister in 1996. He demanded for women who appeared on TV to be fired.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Like their leader Mullah Omar, most Taliban soldiers were poor villagers educated in Wahhabi schools in neighboring Pakistan. Pakistani Pashtuns also joined the group. The Taliban declared that women were forbidden to go to work and that they were not to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male family member. When they did go out, they were required to wear an all-covering burqa. Women were denied formal education and were usually forced to stay at home.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: During the Taliban's five-year rule, women in Afghanistan were essentially put under house arrest, and often forced to paint their windows over so that no one could see in or out. Some women who once held respectable positions were forced to wander the streets in their burqas, selling everything they owned or begging in order to survive. The United Nations refused to recognize the Taliban government, with the United States imposing heavy sanctions, leading to extreme economic hardship.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Because most teachers had been women before the Taliban regime, the new restrictions on women's employment created a huge lack of teachers, which put an immense strain on the education of both boys and girls. Although women were banned from most jobs, including teaching, some women in the medical field were allowed to continue working. This is because the Taliban required that women could be treated only by female physicians.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Several Taliban and Al-Qaeda commanders engaged in human trafficking, abducting women and selling them into forced prostitution and slavery in Pakistan. "Time Magazine" writes: "The Taliban often argued that the brutal restrictions they placed on women were actually a way of revering and protecting the opposite sex. The behavior of the Taliban during the six years they expanded their rule in Afghanistan made a mockery of that claim."


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In late 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan, and a new government under Hamid Karzai was formed, which included women like in pre-1990s Afghanistan. Under the new constitution of 2004, 27 percent of the 250 seats in the House of the People are reserved for women.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In March 2012, President Karzai endorsed a "code of conduct" which was issued by the Ulema Council. Some of the rules state that "women should not travel without a male guardian and should not mingle with strange men in places such as schools, markets and offices." Karzai said that the rules were in line with Islamic law and that the code of conduct was written in consultation with Afghan women's group." Rights organizations and women activists said that by endorsing this code of conduct, Karzai was endangering "hard-won progress in women's right since the Taliban fell from power in 2001".


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The overall situation for Afghan women improved during the 2000s, particularly in major urban areas, but those living in rural parts of the country still faced many problems. In 2013, a female Indian author Sushmita Banerjee was killed in Paktika province by militants for allegedly defying Taliban diktats. She was married to an Afghan businessman and had recently relocated to Afghanistan. Earlier she had escaped two instances of execution by the Taliban in 1995 and later fled to India. Her account of the escape became a Bollywood film, Escape from Taliban.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: A 2011 government report found that 25 percent of the women and girls diagnosed with obstetric fistula, a preventable childbirth injury in which prolonged labor creates a hole in the birth canal, were younger than 16 when they married. In 2013, the United Nations published statistics showing a 20% increase in violence against women, often due to domestic violence being justified by conservative religion and culture. In February 2014, Afghanistan passed a law that includes a provision that limits the ability of government to compel some family members to be witnesses to domestic violence. Human Rights Watch described the implementation of the 2009 Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women as "poor," noting that some cases were ignored.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Under Afghan law, females across the country are permitted to drive vehicles. They are also permitted to participate in certain international events such as Olympic Games and robot competitions. Human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom have expressed concern at women's rights in the country. Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security ranks Afghanistan as one of the worst countries for women.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: According to the new law signed by Ashraf Ghani president of Afghanistan, Afghan women were allowed to include their names on their children's birth certificates and identification cards. This law served as a major victory for Afghan women's rights activists, including Laleh Osmany, who campaigned under the social media hashtag #WhereIsMyName, for several years for both the parents' names to be included.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In August 2021, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and the United States left the country, and the Taliban took control and established a new all-male government. The interim government has not been recognized internationally, since the international community linked recognition to respect for women's and minority rights.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Despite repeated assurances by the Taliban that women's rights would be respected, severe restrictions have been placed on their access to education and work. In some areas, the Taliban forced women to stop working altogether. Education in lower grades resumed only in classes segregated by gender. In higher grades (7 through 12) and at the university level, classes for girls and women have been suspended. On 27 September, the new chancellor of Kabul University, Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat, announced that women were not allowed to return to university to either study or work. The Taliban cited security concerns as the reason for these measures, however, did not specify under which conditions girls would be allowed to return to school.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The new Taliban interim cabinet does not include any women as either ministers or deputy ministers. The Ministry of Women's Affairs has been abolished. The protests by women that followed these announcements, especially in Kabul, have been met with violence by the Taliban security forces.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In May 2022, the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice published a decree requiring all women in Afghanistan to wear full-body coverings when in public (either a burqa or an abaya paired with a niqāb, which leaves only the eyes uncovered). The decree said enforcement action including fines, prison time, or termination from government employment would be taken against male "guardians" who fail to ensure their female relatives abide by the law. Rights groups, including the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan, sharply criticized the decision. The decision is expected to adversely affect the Islamic Emirate's chances of international recognition.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Many women in Afghanistan experience at least one form of abuse. In 2015, the World Health Organization reported that 90% of women in Afghanistan had experienced at least one form of domestic violence. Violence against women is widely tolerated by the community, and it is widely practiced in Afghanistan. Violence against women in Afghanistan ranges from verbal abuse and psychological abuse to physical abuse and unlawful killing.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: From infancy, girls and women are under the authority of their fathers or husbands. Their freedom of movement is restricted since they are children and their choice of husbands is also restricted. Women and girls are deprived of education and denied economic liberty. In their pre-marriage and post-marriage relationships, their ability to assert their economic and social independence is limited by their families. Most married Afghan females are faced with the stark reality that they are forced to endure abuse. If they try to extricate themselves from the situation of abuse, they invariably face social stigma, social isolation, persecution for leaving their homes by the authorities and honor killings by their relatives.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Customs and traditions which are influenced by centuries-old patriarchal rules prevail, the issue of violence against women becomes pronounced. The high illiteracy rate among the population further perpetuates the problem. A number of women across Afghanistan believe that it is acceptable for their husbands to abuse them. Reversing this general acceptance of abuse was one of the main reasons behind the creation of the EVAW.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In 2009, the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) was signed into law. The EVAW was created by multiple organizations which were assisted by prominent women's rights activists in Kabul (namely UNIFEM, Rights & Democracy, Afghan Women's Network, the Women's Commission in the Parliament and the Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In March 2015, Farkhunda Malikzada, a 27-year-old Afghan woman was publicly beaten and slain by an angry mob of radical Muslims in Kabul on a false accusation of Quran desecration. A number of prominent public officials turned to Facebook immediately after the death to endorse the lynching. It was later revealed that she did not burn the Quran.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In 2018, Amnesty International reported that violence against women was perpetrated by both state and non-state actors.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In April 2020, HRW reported that in Afghanistan, women with disabilities face all forms of discrimination and sexual harassment while they are accessing government assistance, health care and schools. The report also detailed everyday barriers which women and girls face in one of the world's poorest countries.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: On 14 August 2020, Fawzia Koofi, a member of Afghanistan's peace negotiating team, was wounded in an assassination attempt near the capital, Kabul, while she was returning from a visit to the northern province of Parwan. Fawzia Koofi is a part of a 21-member team which is charged with representing the Afghan government in upcoming peace talks with the Taliban.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: A 33-year-old Afghan woman was attacked by three people while she was on her way from work to her home. She was shot and stabbed in her eyes with a knife. The woman survived the attack, but she lost her eyesight. Taliban denied allegations and said that the attack was carried out on her father's order, as he vehemently opposed her working outside of home.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: United Nations Human Rights Council have reported that one or two women in Afghanistan are committing suicide every day. UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet condemned the massive unemployment of women, the restrictions placed on the way they dress, and their access on basic services.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: On 12 August 2022, the UN human rights experts urged international community to take stringent actions to protect Afghans from human rights violations including arbitrary detention, summary executions, internal displacement, and unlawful restrictions on their human rights, in particular those most likely to be affected such as women and girls and vulnerable citizens. Since the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in August 2021, the UN has reported a plethora of human rights violations committed by the Taliban, with their virtual erasure and systematic oppression of women and girls from society being particularly egregious.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In 2012, Afghanistan recorded 240 cases in which women were the victims of honor killings. Of the reported honor killings, 21% of them were committed by the victims' husbands, 7% of them were committed by their brothers, 4% of them were committed by their fathers, and the rest of them were committed by other relatives of the victims.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In May 2017, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan concluded that the vast majority of the perpetrators of honor killings were not punished.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: On 12 July 2021, a woman in Faryab Province was beaten to death by Taliban militants and her house was set alight.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In Balkh Province in August 2021, Taliban militants killed an Afghan woman because she was wearing tight clothing and because she was not being accompanied by a male relative.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: A large number of Afghan women served as members of parliament until the Fall of Kabul in early 2021. Some of these included Shukria Barakzai, Fauzia Gailani, Nilofar Ibrahimi, Fauzia Koofi, and Malalai Joya. Several women also took positions as ministers, including Suhaila Seddiqi, Sima Samar, Husn Banu Ghazanfar, and Suraya Dalil. Habiba Sarabi became the first female governor in Afghanistan. She also served as Minister of Women's Affairs. Azra Jafari became the first female mayor of Nili, the capital of Daykundi Province. As of December 2018, Roya Rahmani is the first-ever female Afghan ambassador to the United States. In September 2020, Afghanistan has secured a seat on the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women for the first time, an achievement that is seen as a “sign of progress for a country once notorious for the oppression of women”.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), which includes the Afghan National Police, have a growing number of female officers. One of the Afghan National Army Brigadier generals is Khatol Mohammadzai. In 2012, Niloofar Rahmani became the first female pilot in the Afghan Air Force pilot training program to fly solo in a fixed-wing aircraft, following the footsteps of Colonel Latifa Nabizada, the first Afghan female pilot ever to fly a military helicopter. Other notable Afghan women include Naghma, Aryana Sayeed, Seeta Qasemi, Yalda Hakim, Roya Mahboob, Aziza Siddiqui, Mary Akrami, Suraya Pakzad, Wazhma Frogh, Shukria Asil, Shafiqa Quraishi, Maria Bashir, Maryam Durani, Malalai Bahaduri, and Nasrin Oryakhil.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The most popular traditional work for women in Afghanistan is tailoring, and a large percentage of the population are professional tailors working from home. Since the fall of the Taliban, women have returned to work in Afghanistan. Some became entrepreneurs by starting businesses. For example, Meena Rahmani became the first woman in Afghanistan to open a bowling center in Kabul. Many others are employed by companies and small businesses. Some engaged in singing, acting, and news broadcasting. In 2015, 17-year-old Negin Khpolwak became Afghanistan's first female music conductor.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In 2014, women made up 16.1% of the labor force in Afghanistan. Because the nation has a struggling economy overwhelmed with massive unemployment, women often cannot find work where they receive sufficient pay. One area of the economy where women do play a significant role is in agriculture. Of the number of Afghans employed in the agriculture field or similar occupations, about 30 percent of them are women. In some areas in Afghanistan, women may spend as much time working on the land as men do, but still often earn three times less than men in wages.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In terms of percentage, women rank high in the fields of medicine and media, and are slowly working their way into the field of justice. Because women are still highly encouraged to consult a female physician when they go to the hospital, nearly fifty percent of all Afghans in the medical profession are women. The number of women having professions in the media is also rising. It was reported in 2008 that nearly a dozen of television stations had all-female anchors as well as female producers. As women are given more opportunities in education and the workforce, more of them are turning towards careers in medicine, media, and justice.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: However, even the women that are given the opportunity to have careers have to struggle to balance their home life with their work life, as household tasks are seen as primarily female duties. Since the Afghan economy is weak, very few women can afford to hire domestic helpers, so they are forced to take care of all the household work primarily on their own. Those who choose to work must labour twice as hard because they are essentially holding two jobs.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Airlines have welcomed Afghan women in various roles. The national airline, Ariana Afghan Airlines, said that 30 percent of its workforce were women as of 2020. Private airline Kam Air also had over a hundred women in employment. In February 2021, Kam Air operated the first flight with an all-female crew, including an Afghan pilot, in a domestic flight from Kabul to Herat.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Education in Afghanistan has gradually improved in the last decade but much more has to be done to bring it to the international standard. The literacy rate for females is merely 24.2%. There are around 9 million students in the country. Of this, about 60% are males and 40% females. Over 174,000 students are enrolled in different universities around the country. About 21% of these are females.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In the early twentieth century, education for women was extremely rare due to the lack of schools for girls. Occasionally girls were able to receive an education on the primary level but they never moved past the secondary level. During Zahir Shah's reign (1933–1973) education for women became a priority and young girls began being sent to schools. At these schools, girls were taught discipline, new technologies, ideas, and socialization in society.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Kabul University was opened to girls in 1947 and by 1973 there were an estimated 150,000 girls in schools across Afghanistan. Unfortunately, marriage at a young age added to the high drop out rate but more and more girls were entering professions that were once viewed as only being for men. Women were being given new opportunities to earn better lives for both themselves and their families. However, after the civil war and the takeover by the Taliban, women were stripped of these opportunities and sent back to lives where they were to stay at home and be controlled by their husbands and fathers.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: During the Taliban regime, many women who had previously been teachers began secretly giving an education to young girls (as well as some boys) in their neighborhoods, teaching from ten to sixty children at a time. The homes of these women became community homes for students, and were entirely financed and managed by women. News about these secret schools spread through word of mouth from woman to woman.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Each day young girls would hide all their school supplies, such as books, notebooks and pencils, underneath their burqas to go to school. At these schools, young females were taught basic literary skills, numeracy skills, and various other subjects such as biology, chemistry, English, Quranic Studies, cooking, sewing, and knitting. Many women involved in teaching were caught by the Taliban and persecuted, jailed, and tortured.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The Taliban are still opposed to education for Afghan boys and girls. They are burning down schools, killing students and teachers by all kinds of means, including chemical warfare. For example, in June 2012, fifteen suspects were detained by Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) "in connection with the serial anti-school attacks in northern Afghanistan." The NDS believes that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence was behind the idea. During the same period, Pakistan has been refusing to deliver Afghan bound school text books.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In 2015, the Kabul University began the first master's degree course in gender and women's studies in Afghanistan.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Afghan women obtain education in Kazakhstan within the Kazakh-Afghan state educational programme sponsored by the Republic of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan attaches great importance to empowering women and strengthening stability in Afghanistan. In September 2018, Kazakhstan reached an agreement with the European Union that the EU would contribute two million euros to train and educate Afghan women in Kazakhstan.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In October 2019, Kazakhstan, the EU and the UNDP launched an education programme to train and educate several dozen Afghan women in Kazakh universities over the next five years. As of 2019, almost 900 graduates of Kazakhstan's programme serve in top positions in the Afghan president's office, government ministries, the border guards and police, while others work as respected doctors, engineers and journalists.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In the last decade, Afghan women have participated in futsal, football, basketball, skiing and various other sports. In 2015, Afghanistan held its first marathon; among those who ran the entire marathon was one woman, Zainab, age 25, who thus became the first Afghan woman to run in a marathon within her own country. In 2004, three years after the fall of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan sent women athletes to the Olympics for the first time. Since then, only four women have competed in the Olympics under the Afghan flag.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Marriages in Afghanistan are usually in accordance with Islam and the culture of Afghanistan. The legal age for marriage in Afghanistan is 16. Afghans marry each other based on religious sect, ethnicity, and tribal association. It is rare to see a marriage between a Sunni Pashtun and a Shia Hazara. The nation is a patriarchal society where it is commonly believed that elder men are entitled to make decisions for their families. A man can divorce his wife without the need for her agreement, whereas the opposite is not the case.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: The country has a high total fertility rate, at 5.33 children born/woman as of 2015. Contraception use is low: 21.2% of women, as of 2010/11.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Arranged marriages and forced marriages are reported in Afghanistan. After a marriage is arranged, the two families sign a contract which both parties are socially and culturally obligated to honor. Among low-income families, it is common for the groom to pay a bride price to the bride's family. The price is negotiated only among the parents. The bride price is viewed as compensation for the money that the bride's family has had to spend on her care and upbringing. In almost 50% of cases, the bride is younger than 18 and in 15% of marriages, the bride is younger than 15. Sometimes women resort to suicide to escape these marriages.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: In certain areas, females are sometimes bartered in a method of dispute resolution which is called a baad. Proponents of baad claim that it helps prevent enmity and violence between families, although the females themselves are sometimes subjected to a considerable amount of violence both before and after their marriages into families through baad. The practice of baad is technically illegal in Afghanistan.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Under the Afghan law, "if a woman seeks a divorce then she has to have the approval of her husband and needs witnesses who can testify in court that the divorce is justified." The first occurrence in which a woman divorced a man in Afghanistan was the divorce which was initiated by Rora Asim Khan, who divorced her husband in 1927. This event was considered unique at the time when it occurred, but it was an exception, because Rora Asim Khan was a foreign citizen, who obtained her divorce with the assistance of the German embassy.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: While it is legal for male citizens to marry foreign non-Muslims, it is illegal for female citizens to do so, and Afghan law considers all Afghan citizens Muslims.


title: Women in Afghanistan

text: Up until 17 September 2020, Afghan law dictated that only the father's name should be recorded on identification cards. President Ashraf Ghani signed into law an amendment which was long sought by women's rights campaigners since a campaign which garnered high-profile support from celebrities and members of parliament was launched three years ago under the hashtag #WhereIsMyName.


title: Unicode block

text: A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes (code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the addition of new glyphs are discussed and evaluated by considering the relevant block or blocks as a whole.


title: Unicode block

text: Each block is generally, but not always, meant to supply glyphs used by one or more specific languages, or in some general application area such as mathematics, surveying, decorative typesetting, social forums, etc.


title: Unicode block

text: Unicode blocks are identified by unique names, which use only ASCII characters and are usually descriptive of the nature of the symbols, in English; such as "Tibetan" or "Supplemental Arrows-A". (When comparing block names, one is supposed to equate uppercase with lowercase letters, and ignore any whitespace, hyphens, and underbars; so the last name is equivalent to "supplemental_arrows__a" and "SUPPLEMENTALARROWSA".


title: Unicode block

text: Blocks are pairwise disjoint; that is, they do not overlap. The starting code point and the size (number of code points) of each block are always multiples of 16; therefore, in the hexadecimal notation, the starting (smallest) point is U+"xxx"0 and the ending (largest) point is U+"yyy"F, where "xxx" and "yyy" are three or more hexadecimal digits. (These constraints are intended to simplify the display of glyphs in Unicode Consortium documents, as tables with 16 columns labeled with the last hexadecimal digit of the code point.) The size of a block may range from the minimum of 16 to a maximum of 65,536 code points.


title: Unicode block

text: Every assigned code point has a glyph property called "Block", whose value is a character string naming the unique block that owns that point. However, a block may also contain unassigned code points, usually reserved for future additions of characters that "logically" should belong to that block. Code points not belonging to any of the named blocks, e.g. in the unassigned planes 4–13, have the value block="No_block".


title: Unicode block

text: Each Unicode point also has a property called "General Category", that attempts to describe the role of the corresponding symbol in the languages or applications for whose sake it was included in the system. Examples of General Categories are "Lu" (meaning upper-case letter), "Nd" (decimal digit), "Pi" (open-quote punctuation), and "Mn" (non-spacing mark, i.e. a diacritic for the preceding glyph). This division is completely independent of code blocks: the code points with a given General Category generally span many blocks, and do not have to be consecutive, not even within each block.


title: Unicode block

text: Each code point also has a script property, specifying which writing system it is intended for, or whether it is intended for multiple writing systems. This, also, is independent of block.


title: Unicode block

text: In descriptions of the Unicode system, a block may be subdivided into more specific subgroups, such as the "Chess symbols" in the Miscellaneous Symbols block (not to be confused with the separate Chess Symbols block). Those subgroups are not "blocks" in the technical sense used by the Unicode consortium, and are named only for the convenience of users.


title: Unicode block

text: The Unicode Stability Policy requires that a character, once assigned, may not be moved or removed, although it may be deprecated. This applies to Unicode 2.0 and all subsequent versions.


title: Monaural

text: Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction (often shortened to mono) is sound intended to be heard as if it were emanating from one position. This contrasts with stereophonic sound or "stereo", which uses two separate audio channels to reproduce sound from two microphones on the right and left side, which is reproduced with two separate loudspeakers to give a sense of the direction of sound sources. In mono, only one loudspeaker is necessary, but, when played through multiple loudspeakers or headphones, identical signals are fed to each speaker, resulting in the perception of one-channel sound "imaging" in one sonic space between the speakers (provided that the speakers are set up in a proper symmetrical critical-listening placement). Monaural recordings, like stereo ones, typically use multiple microphones fed into multiple channels on a recording console, but each channel is "panned" to the center. In the final stage, the various center-panned signal paths are usually mixed down to two identical tracks, which, because they are identical, are perceived upon playback as representing a single unified signal at a single place in the soundstage. In some cases, multitrack sources are mixed to a one-track tape, thus becoming one signal. In the mastering stage, particularly in the days of mono records, the one- or two-track mono master tape was then transferred to a one-track lathe used to produce a master disc intended to be used in the pressing of a monophonic record. Today, however, monaural recordings are usually mastered to be played on stereo and multi-track formats, yet retain their center-panned mono soundstage characteristics.


title: Monaural

text: Monaural sound has largely been replaced by stereo sound in most entertainment applications, but remains the standard for radiotelephone communications, telephone networks, and audio induction loops for use with hearing aids. FM radio stations broadcast in stereo, while most AM radio stations broadcast in mono. (Although an AM stereo broadcast standard exists, few AM stations are equipped to use it.) A few FM stations—notably talk-radio stations—choose to broadcast in monaural because of the slight advantage in signal strength and bandwidth the standard affords over a stereophonic signal of the same power.


title: Monaural

text: While some experiments were made with stereophonic recording and reproduction from the early days of the phonograph in the late-19th century, monaural was the rule for almost all audio recording until the second half of the 20th century.


title: Monaural

text: In those formats, the mono-source material is presented as two identical channels, thus being technically stereo.


title: Monaural

text: At various times artists have preferred to work in mono, either in recognition of the technical limitations of the equipment of the era or because of simple preference (this can be seen as analogous to filmmakers working in black and white). An example is John Mellencamp's 2010 album "No Better Than This", recorded in mono to emulate mid-20th century blues and folk records. Some early recordings such as The Beatles' first four albums ("Please Please Me", "With the Beatles", "A Hard Day's Night", "Beatles for Sale") were re-released in the CD era as monophonic in recognition of the fact that the source tapes for the earliest recordings were two-track, with vocals on one track and instruments on the other (even though this was only true on the first two albums, while the latter two had been recorded on four-track). This was actually intended to provide flexibility in producing a final mono mix, not to provide a stereo recording, although because of demand this was done anyway, and the early material was available on vinyl in both mono and stereo formats. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was common in the pop world for stereophonic versions of mono tracks to be generated electronically using filtering techniques to attempt to pick out various instruments and vocals; but these were often considered unsatisfactory, owing to the artifacts of the conversion process.


title: Monaural

text: Directors Stanley Kubrick and Woody Allen, among others, preferred to record their films' sound tracks in mono.


title: Monaural

text: Monaural LP records were eventually phased out and no longer manufactured after the early 1970s, with a few exceptions. For example, Decca UK had a few double issues until the end of 1970 – the last one being Tom Jones's "I Who Have Nothing"; in Brazil records were released in both mono and stereo as late as 1972. During the 1960s it was common for albums to be released as both mono and stereo LPs, occasionally with slight differences between the two (again, detailed information of The Beatles' recordings provides a good example of the differences). This was because many people owned mono record players that were incapable of playing stereo records, as well as the prevalence of AM radio. Because of the limited quantities pressed and alternative mixes of several tracks, the monaural versions of these albums are often valued more highly than their stereo LP counterparts in record-collecting circles today.


title: Monaural

text: On 9 September 2009, The Beatles re-released a remastered box set of their mono output spanning the "Please Please Me" album to "The Beatles" (commonly called "The White Album"). The set, simply called "The Beatles in Mono", also includes a two-disc summary of the mono singles, B-sides and EP tracks released throughout their career. Also included were five tracks originally mixed for an unissued mono "Yellow Submarine" EP. Bob Dylan followed suit on 19 October 2010 with "The Original Mono Recordings", a box set featuring the mono releases from "Bob Dylan" (1962) to "John Wesley Harding" (1967). On 21 November 2011, The Kinks' mono recordings were issued as "The Kinks in Mono" box set, featuring the releases of the band's albums from "Kinks" (1964) to "Arthur" (1969), with three additional CDs of non-album tracks that appeared as singles or EP tracks. When the initial run of the box set sold out, no more were pressed, unlike the Beatles and Dylan sets.


title: Monaural

text: Sometimes "mono sound" or "monaural" can simply refer to a merged pair of stereo channels - also known as "collapsed stereo" or "folded-down stereo". Over time some devices have used mono sound amplification circuitry with two or more speakers since it can cut the cost of the hardware. Some consumer electronics with stereo RCA outputs have a microswitch in the red RCA output (i.e., the right stereo channel) that disables merging of stereo sound into the white (left stereo channel) RCA output. Common devices with this are VCRs, DVD/Blu-ray players, information appliances, set-top boxes, and the like. Video game consoles sometimes have male RCA ends of cables with a proprietary multi-A/V plug on the other end, which prevents automatic stereo merging unless adapters are used.


title: Monaural

text: Disadvantages of merged stereo involve phase cancellations that may have the effect of muffling the final sound output. If channels are merged after being sent through a power amplifier but before being connected to a loudspeaker, it places more stress on the loudspeaker. It has usually been the practice in recording studios to make separate mixes for mono recordings (rather than folded-down stereo-to-mono), so that the final mono master will avoid the pitfalls of collapsed stereo. In video games, merging stereo to mono sound prevents player from discerning what direction distant SFX are coming from, and reverse stereo has a similar setback too. Having an array of loudspeakers connected to their own amplifier outputs can mitigate issues with the electrical load for a single loudspeaker coil and allow the listener to perceive an "image" of sound in the free space between the speakers.


title: Monaural

text: Mirrored mono sound is the opposite of merged stereo, since it can be a case where media with mono sound that stereo playback devices automatically mirror it with are played on both channels of the receiver. It can also mean having a mono input mixed down to stereo amplification circuitry, or a mono system with a headphone output compatible with stereo headphones. An example of an application where both merged stereo and mirror mono apply is when a compact audio cassette respectively plays back "summed" stereo channels on a mono reading head, and when a compact cassette recorded with mono sound is played back with a stereo tape head.


title: Monaural

text: Other instances of "mirrored mono" also include using the right stereo channel in lieu of a "left" one (or vice versa) where both channels are wired to mirror only one.


title: Monaural

text: Instances of both "merged stereo" and "mirrored mono" can occur when the stereo channels are merged to a mono system with stereo headphone compatibility or when a mono system has "twin speakers" (or "pseudo-stereo").


title: Monaural

text: Other applications that involve mirrored mono with merged stereo occur when MONO is available as an internal feature of a device that can toggle between STEREO and MONO, for instance many FM radios are capable of toggling between MONO and STEREO in a way where stereo can both MERGE into mono, and then MIRROR between both stereo speakers. This tactic can also be used on other devices, of which computer software and some video games will have a feature that will allow STEREO or MONO for the soundtrack, in which sometimes this can facilitate MERGING stereo internally to spare one from using a Y adapter with LEFT and RIGHT RCA plugs when using mono equipment, such as guitar amplifiers.


title: Monaural

text: Some TV/VCR combo decks on the market had stereo TV functionality with "twin speakers", whereas the VCR feature was only mono, which is typical of "consumer-grade VCRs" from decades ago. Some of these devices even had front RCA inputs for composite video (yellow), and mono audio (white) in which many of these devices didn't even have a right-channel RCA plug (red) even if it was just for "merging" stereo into mono for mono soundtracks to be recorded onto videotapes. This is odd since one would think that a "right channel" would be included for A/V in on a TV which had MTS stereo TV sound on its tuner.


title: The Family That Preys

text: The Family That Preys is a 2008 American comedy-drama film, written, produced, and directed by Tyler Perry. The screenplay focuses on two families, one wealthy and the other working class, whose lives are intertwined in both love and business.


title: The Family That Preys

text: In the prologue, socialite Charlotte Cartwright hosts the wedding of Andrea—the daughter of Charlotte's best friend, Alice Evans—and Chris Bennett, a construction worker. The couple is congratulated by Charlotte's son, William, and his wife, Jillian, who had eloped instead of letting Charlotte plan an elaborate reception for them. William suggests that the newlyweds contact him for employment with the Cartwrights's successful Atlanta construction company after their honeymoon.


title: The Family That Preys

text: Four years later, Andrea's sister, Pam, is married to Ben and looks after Andrea's three-year-old son for extra income while working at their mother's diner. To Pam's chagrin, Andrea doesn't help their mother more financially, though Andrea has designer clothes and a new Mercedes. Andrea is actually enjoying the perks of being in an extramarital affair with William.


title: The Family That Preys

text: Chris dreams of opening a construction firm with Ben, but Andrea ridicules Chris's aspirations. At the bank, Chris is rejected for a loan application, but discovers his wife has deposited nearly $300,000 in a secret account. Andrea catches Chris going through her hidden financial records one night. She tells him that the money is bonuses she received from William and that she has the right to some privacy from her spouse. She refuses to finance his business.


title: The Family That Preys

text: William is determined to take the family business from his mother, believing the $500-million deal he recently closed will prove his capabilities. Charlotte hires Abigail "Abby" Dexter as COO and determines the company will have to front $25 million to make William's deal viable. The only way to raise the money is for Charlotte to sell 10% of her shares, leaving her with a minority vote. William tells Abby that Charlotte's vote and his vote combined will give the Cartwrights continued control; Abby advises Charlotte to sell her shares.


title: The Family That Preys

text: Charlotte asks Alice to go on a road trip in the vintage turquoise Cadillac convertible Charlotte has bought. Alice eventually agrees, and they head west without a set route or schedule. Charlotte introduces Alice to honky-tonks and male strip clubs; Alice reciprocates by taking Charlotte to a communal baptism. One night, Charlotte becomes stressed out over her camera and reveals she has early-onset Alzheimer's disease. She has been told nothing can slow her mental decline.


title: The Family That Preys

text: At the company gala, both Jillian and Abby discover Andrea and William's affair. William later fires both Chris and Ben after Chris asks him for money to start a construction business of their own. Abby warns Andrea of the repercussions of the affair that will likely result in her termination from the company, only for Andrea to rebuff this as she fervently believes William will protect her. Convinced that they were marital assets, Chris takes the money from the hidden account and pays deposits to start a construction firm with Ben.


title: The Family That Preys

text: Charlotte and Alice return to Atlanta. Andrea confronts Chris for taking her $300,000. She says he and Ben will never be like William. Ben states that nobody cares about William and that Andrea can't see that because of the affair. Andrea admits to Chris that the money was from William, her lover. Angry and disgusted, Chris slaps her, sending her flying over the counter. Andrea, further incensed, tells him to keep the money and move out. As Chris brings up their son, Andrea says William is the father.


title: The Family That Preys

text: Alice tries to persuade Andrea to end her affair with William and reconcile with Chris, explaining to her that their affair will not last and William will never marry her, begging her to stop before her life is destroyed. Andrea refuses to believe her, and says if that happens, she will enjoy the ride on the way down.


title: The Family That Preys

text: William is plotting to take over the family firm. Although they had never been close, Jillian goes to Charlotte for advice. Charlotte offers little consolation, but reminds her that she is a woman scorned without a prenuptial agreement, and as such can divorce or reconcile and be okay either way. Jillian warns Charlotte of William's plan to have the board vote her out.


title: The Family That Preys

text: Chris confronts William on a job site and punches him. Jillian then confronts Andrea in the hotel room where trysts with William were held each Wednesday, and warns her to stay away from her family and that William won’t be seeing her again.


title: The Family That Preys

text: Charlotte calls a board meeting and fires William with the support of the Calvary Company, a silent investor revealed to be Alice. Alice has been receiving financial guidance for years from Nicholas "Nick" Blanchett, a homeless man she frequently fed at her diner. Earlier, it is explained that Nick had been a regular customer who left large tips until he lost his job, wife, and custody of his children. Nick still visits the diner regularly and pays Alice with solid investment advice. Later, it is revealed that Nick had been working for William as a powerful stockbroker until William fired him without cause.


title: The Family That Preys

text: In the parking lot, Andrea approaches William unaware of the recent events and expecting him to leave Jillian for her. Instead, he washes his hands of Andrea, and drives away, ignoring her claim that he is her son's father. Charlotte takes a deadly combination of pills and calls Alice, who has an emotional breakdown. Despondently, Alice gives the eulogy at Charlotte's funeral.


title: The Family That Preys

text: The movie ends with Chris and Andrea parting, with the paternity of their son left unclear. Chris is now wealthier after opening a firm with Ben. Andrea on the other hand is now sad, guilt-ridden, lonely, heartbroken and now unemployed. She is forced to live in a low-rent apartment and rely on child support from Chris to survive, with her worst fears realized. Nick is wealthy and buys a house. William & Jillian reconcile, slowly salvaging their marriage. Alice decides to sell the diner, driving off in the car that Charlotte left her (with a photo of her and Charlotte taped to the dashboard) to start life anew on the road.


title: The Family That Preys

text: The film opened in 2,070 theaters in North America on September 12, 2008 and grossed $17.4 million in its opening weekend, ranking #2 at the box office behind "Burn After Reading". It eventually earned $37.1 million domestically, making it the second-least successful of Tyler Perry's films ahead of "Daddy's Little Girls".


title: The Family That Preys

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 53% based on 43 reviews, with an average rating of 5.90/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Tyler Perry's "The Family That Preys" treads the filmmaker's established terrain of family loyalty and moral uprightness, though the occasionally predictable plot slides forward, aided by an excess of soapy melodrama." Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 49 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Family That Preys

text: Stephen Holden of "The New York Times" said, "The suds that cascade through [the film] more than equal the cubic footage from nighttime soaps like "Dallas", "Dynasty" and their offspring. As the movie proceeds, the flow quickens into a surging flood tide of recriminations and reversals in which blows are exchanged, claws bared and tears shed . . . "The Family That Preys" doesn’t worry about how it gets from A to Z. There is no problem that a miraculous (and preposterous) plot development can’t resolve in two minutes."


title: The Family That Preys

text: The "New York Daily News" rated the film three out of five stars and commented, "Perry's notoriously overstuffed plots have sometimes been top-heavy, but this movie, like Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters", hangs on an elegant structure that doesn't feel forced. Perry's skills as a director have improved as his casts have gotten better, and he gives the lovely Woodard one of her most satisfying roles . . . By melding the pleasures of 1950s-style melodrama . . . with equal-gender, African-American-aimed plots, Perry has found success in a niche only he now occupies. And by adding Christian tenets and modern issues . . . Perry shows he knows what his audience wants. First and foremost, that's a smart, satisfying movie experience, which "Family" is."


title: The Family That Preys

text: Claudia Puig of "USA Today" said the best thing about the film "is the opportunity it affords to watch a pair of veteran actresses still at the top of their game. Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates play best pals in this soap opera-style story, and the moments each are on-screen are undeniably the movie's best. One senses a rapport and chemistry between the women that transcends the formulaic plot."


title: The Family That Preys

text: Stephen Farber of "The Hollywood Reporter" observed, "Although this interracial "Dynasty" isn't always believable - it's a stretch to accept the lifelong friendship of the two matriarchs as well as the last-minute business coup that they engineer - there's plenty of action to keep us engrossed. Perry wears his religious faith lightly . . . and is shrewd enough to balance piety with raucous humor and lots of sinful shenanigans. Perry's filmmaking skills have improved to the level of competence, and he has assembled a dream cast."


title: The Family That Preys

text: Roger Moore of the "Orlando Sentinel" rated the film two out of five stars and called it Tyler Perry's "most cinematically polished production to date" but also "yet another example of how the mini-mogul from Atlanta is his own worst enemy, raiding his cupboard of his popular but pandering stage plays and not bothering to script doctor them for the screen. As sophisticated as the filmmaking becomes, Perry's scripts are still painfully unsophisticated grab-bags of melodramatic cliches, tired jokes and sermonizing."


title: The Family That Preys

text: Peter Debruge of "Variety" said the film "recycles familiar ingredients according to his own unique formula, serving up a lip-smacking, finger-snapping sudser" and added, "Perry has a tendency to overload his features, and "The Family That Preys" is no exception, reflecting the helmer's view that the emotional roller-coaster of life can whip its passengers from outrage to exhilaration, from belly laughs to tears in an instant, making for an exhausting yet cathartic overall experience. The result seems ideal for [audiences] who don't see too many movies, cramming enough into one film to satisfy them until the next Perry pic comes out."


title: The Family That Preys

text: Monika Fabian of "Time Out New York" said, "As with Perry’s other films, his Christian moralistic storytelling can be slightly off-putting — but the solid acting and genuinely entertaining story are sure to satisfy fans, and maybe even bring in some converts."


title: The Family That Preys

text: Ken Fox of "TV Guide" rated the film three out of four stars and said, "Thanks to some first-rate acting from its stars, it ranks among Perry's best."


title: The Family That Preys

text: Tom Becker of "DVD Verdict" said, "The Family That Preys has that Love Boat kind of watchability and simplicity. Everything runs in a straight line, all endings are inevitable, and emotions and morals are no more complex than a well-timed platitude. The characters are amalgams of recognizable types plunked down in sitcom settings that elicit near-Pavlovian responses of cheers, jeers, and tears. Here and there, Perry throws us a curve ball—an act of physical violence presented as deserved comeuppance or a character's grim and dubiously appropriate endgame—but even these are not jarring enough to derail it. This is film as comfort food, and not the gourmet kind."


title: The Family That Preys

text: Brian Orndorf of "DVD Talk" said, "Preys" is a soap opera in the most unashamed sense, and while this aesthetic has made Perry heaps of coin, his personal screen touch remains some of the worst overall filmmaking around. The new feature is perhaps even more melodramatic than anything that's come before, taking the Andrea/William affair and using it as the inspiration for the cast to arch their eyebrows to assured cramp, flare nostrils in unintentional comedic fury, and bounce impassioned lines of dialogue off each other with medicine ball grace. It's equal parts hilarious and aggravating, with Perry showing little shame as he works the characters into pants-wetting hysteria."


title: The Family That Preys

text: Gregory Kirschling from "Entertainment Weekly" stated, "Tyler Perry's melodramas have a tendency to skid not only off the counter but out the kitchen and down the hall, too. The Family That Preys, his first film in six months, is all over the place: It's a boardroom/family/couples/road-trip story. Kathy Bates plays the head of an Atlanta construction company where Sanaa Lathan is a snooty exec and her husband (Rockmond Dunbar), for maximum class/race sizzle, is a worker grunt. As usual, the villains, like Lathan, are very bad, and the good guys, like Dunbar, are very noble — until they get mad and clock their wives."


title: The Family That Preys

text: At the Black Reel Awards, both Alfre Woodard and Sanaa Lathan were nominated for "Best Actress". Also Tyler Perry was nominated for "Best Screenplay, Original or Adapted".


title: The Family That Preys

text: Taraji P. Henson won "Best Actress" at the "BET Awards" for her role in the film combined with two other performances in "Not Easily Broken", and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button".


title: The Family That Preys

text: The film was released on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on January 13, 2009. It is in anamorphic widescreen format, with audio tracks and subtitles in English and Spanish. Bonus features include deleted scenes, "Two Families, Two Legends", which spotlights stars Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates; "Preying in the Big Easy", about filming in New Orleans; "Casting the Family", with interviews with the director and cast, and "Delving into the Diner", in which production designer Ina Mayhew discusses her concept for the set.


title: Tidal (album)

text: Tidal is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Fiona Apple, released on July 23, 1996 by The WORK Group. "Tidal" produced six singles: "Shadowboxer", "Slow Like Honey", "Sleep to Dream", "The First Taste", "Criminal" and "Never Is a Promise". "Criminal", the album's most popular single, won a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1998. In 2017, "Tidal" got its first vinyl run as a "Vinyl Me Please" exclusive "Record of the Month".


title: Tidal (album)

text: "When I did "Tidal"," Apple said in 2000, "it was more for the sake of proving myself; telling people from my past something. And to also try to get friends for the future."