Afghanistan's First Lady

In a Western democracy, the job of first lady is at once anachronistic and fraught, its occupant caught between competing conceptions of women's roles. Multiply those tensions a thousand-fold in a developing, Muslim country like Afghanistan, which simultaneously has quotas designed to ensure women's representation in government and appalling practical restrictions on the ability of women and girls to obtain educations and live freely.

Ghani deftly threads the cultural needle, serving as a soft-spoken force for change while refraining from pushing too hard against societal norms. Thus, Ghani is happy to wear a headscarf when in Afghanistan but goes uncovered in the West.

"I'm now first lady and so I'm no longer myself, I have a responsibility to the rest of the women, and so if that's the culture of the moment, I will abide by it," Ghani said.

Similarly, she speaks not of feminism but of the family. "If I were a feminist, I would be talking about women's rights left and right and annoying men and pushing their buttons," Ghani said. "I have a very mild approach to things. It doesn't mean that my commitments are not strong."

To speak with Ghani is, also, inevitably to worry about the tenuous future facing girls and women in Afghanistan, as the U.S. presence recedes and her husband's government weighs peace talks with the Taliban.

"We need to find solutions that include them," Ghani said of the Taliban. "Certainly women's rights will be a very important issue and I don't think that my husband will stand for any regression on that account, but this is their country too."

In the interim, she argues, women's gains in education and the workplace need to be entrenched. "The women of today will not kneel in front of the Taliban," she said. "But we can make them even stronger and then the question will be moot -- totally moot."

Let us hope.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.