Afghanistan was one of the countries around the world celebrating International Women's Day this month. The pomp and circumstance of the event is overshadowed by the fact that life for women in the country is still not very good... though there are improvements. The World's Aaron Schachter reports from the country's capital, Kabul.

A fourth-grader at the 'Afghans for Tomorrow' elementary school in Kabul stands at the head of the class, writing on a white board. She stumbles slightly through a dictation exercise.

'Afghans for Tomorrow' classroom

The school is designed for female students. Some of them were denied an education under the Taliban. Others were displaced by Afghanistan's numerous wars, and some were prohibited from going to school by their own families, because education for girls is frowned upon.

This 4th-grader, Ainabad Turan, is 20 years old. Besides school, her day consists of about four hours cooking and cleaning alongside her mother and two hours of homework.

Ainabad Turan

Turan chuckles when asked whether her mother went to school, and says "No, I'm the first one."

Turan: "We are from the Turkmen tribe, she says, and it's not our tradition; especially in the conservative village where I came from."

With the influx of people into the capitol, some 70 % of girls and young women here are now going to school, at least twice the average of the villages. Turan says she's determined to get through at least 9th grade, so she can fulfill her dream of becoming the first female television anchor on Afghanistan's Turkmani-language channel.

'Afghans for Tomorrow' school building

But it's not easy going for women here. Shakri Barzai, a female Member of the Afghan Parliament, lists some of the factors that hold women back.

Barzai: "Because poverty, lack of security, electricity and culture; the limited access to justice. Men also they don't know how to be a kind husband or father with the female members of their family."

In fact, statistics from Afghanistan's Ministry of Women's Affairs show domestic violence here is rampant; the rate of girls in schools is dropping 5 % a year; only 16 % of women are literate, and the infant mortality rate is high. Even so, Mazarin Safa, Deputy Director of the Ministry, says all is not lost.

Safa: "These statistics are true, but if you compare the situation now to five years ago, things are much much better in terms of education and health facilities, for example. The government has created posters and announcements on TV to teach people that violence in the home is wrong. And there are many women in positions of power and in the Afghan parliament."

They hold 68 seats, to be exact, out of 249 in the National Assembly. Also since the fall of the ultra-conservative Taliban regime five years, two million girls have returned to school, and women are allowed to leave their homes unaccompanied.

But there are women here concerned about what progress might do to Afghanistan's culture. The proliferation of Western aid groups working on their behalf, they maintain, might force them to adopt a culture they don't accept. Having rights, they say, does not mean behaving like Britney Spears.

Ann Norton is a professor of culture at Providence College who's here visiting with a group of women. Norton says being exposed to the western values now sweeping the world doesn't necessarily mean giving up on one's culture.

Norton: "There will be a few who, around the world, who want to be global. They think it's sort of chic and all that. But I really would hope they maintain their culture and continue their traditions. If they incorporate things that are so-called modern, from the 21st century, it has to be their own way."

That said, women are adopting some of the mores of the West. Ainabad Turan, the 20-year-old in fourth grader, says marriage can wait until after her dream of being a television anchor is realized. In a country were many women are forcibly married off at 18 or earlier, this is truly revolutionary thinking.

For The World, I'm Aaron Schachter in Kabul, Afghanistan.