When I first met Asma, I was struck by her heavily lined face, her sunken cheeks, and her eyes that showed deep sorrow and fear.

Though in her early 40s, she appeared much older from years of hunger and stress. She had come looking for work, and I hired her as our housekeeper in Kabul. She wasn't very good at first, and I showed her how to use the cleaners and organize each room. After a while she got the hang of it, and the look of discomfort disappeared from her face.

Asma is one of millions of war widows in Afghanistan, a country that still suffers from nearly 28 years of war and destruction, where women have suffered the most of all. She asked if she could bring her small son, Milat, with her on workdays and I consented. He sat and ate in our kitchen, slowly drinking Coca-Cola like it was nectar from the gods.

Asma told me stories of her life, how her husband had been killed during the Soviet occupation, and how she had lost her job under the Taliban. They had forbidden all women from working, attending school, and receiving medical care from male doctors. They couldn't leave their homes or travel without a male relative, and once, Asma said, she received a brutal whipping from the steel rod of a Taliban across her legs and ankles; apparently her shoes had made too much noise in the market streets.

Life had been very cruel to Asma and her family, but she had hope, now that the Taliban had been driven out by the Coalition forces. Now, she could work again instead of being forced to beg on the dusty streets of Kabul.

Asma was a high school graduate who, unlike nearly 96 per cent of Afghan women in the rural areas of the country, was literate and had worked in a government office for several years before losing her job. She admitted that times had gotten so tough for her and her family after her husband's death that she was forced to push her daughters into early marriages at ages 14 and 16 because she could not afford to feed them and her younger son. It had been a tough decision, but she felt lucky that they were safe now and had babies already within their first year of marriage.

I met her teenage daughters and saw their tiny babies; they seemed too young to really know what to do, but that was the reality for the majority of young Afghan girls. Many of them are married between 12 and 14. Although the law states that the legal marriage age is 16, tradition dictates otherwise, and this has contributed to Afghanistan having the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. A 2006 United Nations report states that an Afghan woman dies every 30 minutes from childbirth or other related causes, and 87 per cent of these cases are preventable.

When I first arrived in Afghanistan with my aunt, who is a gynecologist from New York City, we visited several hospitals and maternity clinics, and shock cannot describe the horrible conditions and lack of equipment and medication that these facilities had.

One young mother had just delivered twins by herself in her home, and had been brought into the maternity hospital by her relatives because she was hemorrhaging to death. They did not have the $10 U.S. it cost to pay for a blood transfusion, but we happily pulled out money from our pockets to cover her medical expenses.

She was one of the lucky ones that day. I noticed that a new ultrasound machine lay in a corner, unplugged. When I asked why the machine was not being used I was told that no one knew how to use it, and electricity was too unreliable to use such a fancy machine. Three out of five incubators did not work in the baby unit, and all of the children born that day were underweight, a few were stillborn, and the one who had spina bifida would surely die within a few days.

Other statistics are just as grim. One in four children does not reach the age of five. Fifty-three per cent of the population in Afghanistan lives on less than a dollar a day. Only 6 per cent have access to electricity and 13 per cent have access to safe drinking water. Life expectancy is around 45 years of age for women and 47 years for men; that is 10 years less than neighbouring countries. Seventy per cent of the population is illiterate.

Afghanistan is considered one of the poorest countries in the world with some of the worst human-development index indicators, according to a 2005 United Nations Development Programme report. These statistics are staggering to most westerners, and rightly so because they are simply horrible and unacceptable to any of us lucky enough to be reading this article.

The bright developments on the horizon of Afghanistan's emerging democracy are Afghan women's participation in the political and media sectors of their society. Without a doubt these women show tremendous strength and courage to stand up for social change, respect for human rights, and equal participation in the reconstruction and renewal of their country. Nearly 60 per cent of the population is female, and without their significant involvement in the historical transformation of post-Taliban Afghanistan, one has to wonder how much change would really occur.

That is why Afghan women's participation in the parliament and in the media is so vital to bringing about positive change; they can be seen, heard and read about in various media, and their presence provides positive role models for other Afghan women and girls to observe and hopefully learn from. But, they also need security and stability to bring about necessary change.

Last time I saw Asma, she proudly showed me her voter registration card and flashed me a beaming smile. She was about to participate in the historic 2005 parliamentary elections where 27 per cent of the lower house's seats were won by women.

Asma said that this was only the beginning. Real change was slowly appearing on the horizon, but we all needed to have faith and remain committed because it might take a long time to materialize. For Asma's sake and many other Afghan women, I certainly hope we all do.

Khorshied Samad is the former Kabul bureau chief and television correspondent for Fox News Channel. She is also the wife of Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada, Omar Samad.