the hard-working peasants were freed from bonds of oppressors and money-lenders, ending the sale of girls for good as hereafter nobody would be entitled to sell any girl or woman in this country" (quoted in Tapper 1984).
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The first two articles in Decree No. 7 forbade the exchange of a woman in marriage for cash or kind and the payment of other prestations customarily due from a bridegroom on festive occasions; the third article set an upper limit of 300 afghanis (the equivalent of $24) on the mahr . Articles 4 to 6 of the decree set the ages of first engagement and marriage at sixteen for women and eighteen for men; stipulated that no one, including widows, could be compelled to marry against his or her will; stated that no one could be prevented from marrying if she or he so desired (Griffiths 1981; Male 1982; Hammond 1984; Tapper 1984; N. H. Dupree 1984; Bradsher 1985; Anwar 1988). Along with the promulgation of Decree No. 7, the PDPA government embarked upon an aggressive literacy campaign. This was led by the Democratic Women's Organization of Afghanistan (DWOA), whose function was to educate women, bring them out of seclusion, and initiate social programs (Nyrop and Seekins 1986: 128). Throughout the countryside, PDPA cadre established literacy classes for men, women, and children in villages. And by August 1979, the government, had established 600 new schools. The PDPA's rationale for pursuing the rural literacy campaign with some zeal was that all previous reformers had made literacy a matter of choice. Because male guardians had chosen not to allow their females to be educated, 99 percent of all Afghan women were illiterate. It was therefore decided that literacy was no longer to remain a matter of (men's) choice, but rather a matter of principle and law.
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This was, clearly, an audacious program for social change, one aimed at the rapid transformation of a patriarchal society and decentralized power structure based on tribal and landlord authority. Revolutionary change, state-building, and women's rights subsequently went hand-in-hand. The emphasis on women's rights on the part of the PDPA reflected: ( a ) their socialist/Marxist ideology, ( b ) their modernizing and egalitarian outlook, ( c ) their social base and originsurban, middle-class professionals, educated in the United
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