Women must be given a place in the governing of a new Afghanistan - that is the somewhat surprising new message to the country's opposition parties from the White House these days, a place not known in recent months for its feminist leanings.
The First Lady, Ms Laura Bush, took over the weekly presidential radio broadcast on Saturday to condemn the "brutal degradation" of women and children in Afghanistan and insist that "the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women."
And singing off the same sheet, Ms Cherie Blair, the British Prime Minister's wife, added her voice to the call in hosting a press conference at which she stressed the importance of female education.
The Secretary of Education, Ms Estelle Morris, and International Development Secretary, Ms Clare Short, joined her.
The US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, was to deliver a similar message to a meeting yesterday with American and Muslim leaders who are women.
On Saturday the State Department issued a report which urged Afghanistan's future government to include both genders, saying the Taliban's repression of women had crippled the country like cutting the wing off a bird.
"The Afghan people want, and the US government supports, a broad-based representative government, which includes women, in post-Taliban Afghanistan," the report said.
The co-ordinated campaign is the brainchild of President Bush's Communications Director, Ms Karen Hughes.
She told the New York Times that: "A society cannot be peaceful and harmonious if one-half of its members are imprisoned in their homes."
The view of the administration, she said, is that "improving education, improving access to health care and improving economic opportunity are an important part of making a nation more stable".
To get that caring message across to America's women a number of prominent women's leaders were invited to the State Department on Friday.
Some of them were enthusiastic afterwards. "I felt their positions were very strong," said the president of the Feminist Majority, Ms Eleanor Smeal.
Ms Theresa Loar, a senior adviser on international women's issues in the State Department under President Clinton and now president of the Vital Voices Global Partnership, agreed.
"The genie is out of the bottle now," she said.
Others were somewhat more cynical, putting the initiative down to Mr Bush's desire to bridge the gender gap in his domestic vote.
Ms Gloria Steinem was blunt. "I can't think of any motive other than the gender gap," she said last week.
"But they should understand that the gender gap is smart, and can tell the difference between rhetoric and reality."
Ms. Hughes, when pressed by the New York Times, did not entirely disagree.
"If through this initiative women who might not have previously wanted to support the president can see him in a different light," she said, "then I hope they will see his compassion and his sincere concern for human dignity."
