Leno’s passion isn’t for self-promotion. Chairman of the Feminist Majority’s Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan, she’s determined instead to focus public attention on the plight of Afghanistan’s women and girls. Under rules imposed by the Taliban regime, they are generally unable to work, attend school or even leave the house without a close male relative. To promote her cause, Leno has done more than overcome her congenital shyness: last summer, in a highly public gesture, she and Jay donated $100,000 to the campaign. “I will never, ever abandon these women,” she says.
Afghanistan has become Hollywood’s latest cause; Meryl Streep, Geena Davis, Sidney Poitier and Melissa Etheridge have all signed on. “Seventh Heaven” and “Family Law” recently devoted episodes to the issue. Building on the publicity generated by its celebrity supporters, the Feminist Majority has blanketed the White House and the State Department with 100,000 petitions, letters, e-mails and faxes.
Their demands: that the United States cut off aid to countries that recognize the Taliban, increase humanitarian assistance to Afghan women and fling open its doors to female Afghan refugees. “To have Leno and other celebrities involved in this cause makes a big difference,” says Mary Diaz, director of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, a New York-based advocacy group.
Not everyone in Washington welcomes the pressure. State Department officials describe the Feminist Majority’s effort as more passionate than practical. And humanitarian groups say they’re taking a more realistic approach, providing Afghan refugees in Pakistan with medical care and schooling–all without a glimmer of the media attention won by the Hollywood crowd.
The Feminist Majority’s most controversial strategy has been its efforts on behalf of specific refugees. In September the group won U.S. visas for 17 Afghans. “For the Feminist Majority to push individual cases that come to Mavis Leno’s attention through a friend who knows an Afghan woman who has access to a fax machine is just not fair or appropriate,” says a State Department official. Afghans are being kidnapped, tortured, even killed, he says, “and at the end of the year I want to know that I’ve approved the most desperate cases.” Responds Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority: “We’re happy to save 17 people who really need it.”
Leno wasn’t eager to exploit her husband’s fame, even to fight the Taliban. But, she says, “energy and commitment were getting me nowhere.” She and all the celebrities in the world can’t singlehandedly save Afghan women from their troubles. But fame has certainly been used for far less worthy pursuits.
