With state of the whole country bring described by a British general as close to anarchy, there’s more bad news specifically for women:

AFGHANISTAN’S notorious Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which was set up by the Taliban to enforce bans on women doing anything from working to wearing nail varnish or laughing out loud, is to be re-created by the government in Kabul….
President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet has approved the proposal to re-establish the department, and the measure will go to Afghanistan’s parliament when it reconvenes later this summer. The conservative complexion of the assembly makes it likely to be passed.
“When we talk of ‘vice and virtue’ . . . the one introduced by the Taliban comes to our minds. But it won’t be like that,” insisted Mohammad Karim Rahimi, a spokesman for the president. …
Nematullah Shahrani, the religious affairs minister who will oversee the department, claims it will focus on alcohol, drugs, crime and corruption. But critics point out that Afghanistan’s criminal laws already address these issues and say that once the department has been re-established, it will be easy to misuse.

This month’s Le Monde Diplomatique has an interesting piece on Libya that, while focused on international relations, also has some interesting social commentary, particularly on the position of women.

One thing that has really changed in the past three years is that you see women in the streets after nightfall. They go shopping in the new boutiques that stay open until midnight, or stop in a cafe,” said an Algerian expatriate.

Gaddafi, for all his many faults, has frequently been a supporter of women’s rights, claiming headscarfs to be “an invention of Satan”, but he is up against powerful conservative social forces. One woman interviewed explains how being divorced is a problem for women because it is not socially acceptable for them to live alone, but often not practical for them to return to the “family home”, which may have been taken over by a brother and his wife. But still the fact that it is being comtemplated is an encouraging sign.

Unfortunately this piece isn’t free on the web, but there is a lot of good free stuff on the monthly’s website.

(Declaration of interest – it is associated with The Guardian Weekly, for which I work, and with which it is available.)

Over on Comment is Free I posted a piece about the “raunch culture” debate, and the way that it has morphed into tutting from (generally) older women about what younger women are wearing, which reminds me uncomfortably of my youth.

If you want to show off your belly-button piercing, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to – and whatever your figure. (I’m astonished at how often people criticising this sort of attire suggest that it is OK on young and svelte figures, but not on anyone else.)