Timid performance on The Voice represents slow progress of women’s rights in Afghanistan

HER performance was timid and pitchy. So what compelled The Voice Afgahanistan judges to turn their chairs?

Channel 9 TV show The Voice logo. Picture: Supplied

IF YOU think auditioning for The Voice Australia takes a lot of guts, spare a thought for the only woman to ever audition for The Voice of Afghanistan.

Shabana Faryad was the sole female contestant in the first season of the Afghan version of the worldwide reality hit, CNN reports, and her shaky performance is nothing if not brave.

Faryad managed to turn two of the four judges’ chairs in the blind auditions despite a pretty timid and pitchy rendition. (Scroll through to 3.10 in the video above to see her in action.)

This small moment — something that would be utterly forgettable on the Australian version of the ratings juggernaut — is actually indicative of the slow progress of women’s rights in the Islamic central Asian nation.

Before US forces toppled the extremist Taliban regime in 2011, women were forbidden from appearing on television.

Now, women can vote and, importantly, one of the show’s judges is a woman, Afghan pop star Aryana Sayeed.

The Voice of Afghanistan judge Aryana Sayeed performs during a charity concert in Kabul. Picture: AFP/Massoud Hossaini

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Sayeed is a popular artist, but she has received death threats from religious hardliners for her figure-hugging clothes and not wearing a headscarf.

Sayeed told CNN that mullahs threatened her life because they expected women in the country to be covered up and compliant.

“They said that whoever kills this singer would go to heaven,” she said.

“It was getting really difficult; I couldn’t go anywhere. I was basically a prisoner in my hotel room. I had bodyguards with me all the time.”

Singing is looked down upon for Afghan woman, so Sayeed was determined to turn her chair when she heard a woman’s voice.

“I had to do it. She at least had the courage to come along, to step onto the stage,” she said of Faryad’s audition.

Sayeed has been strident against Islamic clerics who say women should stay at home and not earn a living. One of her songs contains the lyrics “Because I am a woman, I am a slave’’.

TITLE: Aryana Sayeed's latest song SIZE: 650x366px CAPTION: Aryana Sayeed's latest song

Originally published as Timid performance on The Voice represents slow progress of women’s rights in Afghanistan