Women in Afghanistan
Encyclopedia
Women's rights
in Afghanistan
have suffered through tremendous turmoil in the last three decades or in the last quarter of the past century. Through different rulers such as the Mujahideen
and the Taliban in the later part of the century, women have struggled to gain freedoms and reform a society that is primarily male dominant.
was officially declared a country in the mid eighteenth century, it has suffered from weakness due to the different tribal groups and ethnicities. Of all of the tribal groups, the Pashtuns
are the largest and then followed by Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks
and others. From the late nineteenth century and through the twentieth century the rulers of Afghanistan consistently attempted to lessen women's restrictions in the country. For the most part, these attempts were unsuccessful; however, there were a few leaders who were able to make some significant changes for the time period. Among them was King Amanullah Khan
, who ruled from 1919 to 1929 and made some of the more noteworthy changes in an attempt to unify as well as modernize the country.
Amanullah Khan, along with other rulers following him, promoted freedom for women in the public sphere in order to lessen the control that patriarchal families had over women. Amanhullah Khan stressed the importance for young girls and women to receive an education. Along with encouraging families to send their daughters to school, he promoted the unveiling of women and persuaded them to adopt a more western style of dress. In 1921, he created a law that abolished forced marriage, child marriage, bride price, and put restrictions on polygamy
, a common practice among households in Afghanistan. However, over time these restrictions became nearly impossible to enforce.
Throughout the nineteenth century, Afghanistan continued to be a country dominated by tribes and men continued to have ultimate control over women. In 1973 the state was declared a republic and throughout the 1970s and 1980s a communist group called the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA) took over and attempted to once again reform the marriage laws, women's health laws, and encouraged women's education. During this time Afghanistan made significant advances towards modernization. Minorities of women were able to hold jobs as scientists, teachers, doctors, and civil servants and had a considerable amount of freedom with significant educational opportunities. The majority of women however, lived in poverty and were excluded from these opportunities. In 1977, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
(RAWA) was founded by Meena Keshwar Kamal
in Kabul but her office was moved to Quetta
in neighboring Pakistan where she was assassinated in 1987. Rawa still operates in the region of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Taliban are mostly Pashtuns who are almost entirely educated in Wahhabi schools in Pakistan
. Immediately after coming into power, the Taliban declared that women were forbidden to go to work and they were not to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male family member. When they did go out it was required that they had to wear an all-covering burqa
. Under these restrictions, women were denied an education and were refused health care. Many women were unable to leave their households at all because they couldn’t afford a burqa or they no longer had any male relatives. These women were forced to stay at home and paint their windows so that no one could see in or out. During the Taliban’s rule, women in Afghanistan were essentially put under house arrest and women who once held respectable positions were forced to wander the streets in their burqas selling everything they owned and begging in order to survive.
Because most teachers had been women before the Taliban regime, the new restrictions on women’s employment created a huge lack of teachers, which put an immense strain on the education of both boys and girls. Although women were banned from most jobs, including teaching, women in the medical field were mostly allowed to continue working. This is because the Taliban required that women could be treated only by female physicians. However, women working in the medical field suffered greatly: women who were doctors and nurses were often beaten or had to watch their female colleagues get beaten. Moreover, for several reasons, it was difficult for women to seek medical attention. It was extremely frowned upon for women to need to go to a hospital, and women who did try to go to a hospital were often beaten. Even when a woman was able to make it to a hospital she had no guarantee that she would be seen by a doctor.
militants in Afghanistan that ultimately led to the overthrow of the Taliban in November 2001. The Karzai administration has relaxed policies around women's rights, and in Kabul
women now can be seen driving cars and engaging in other activities that they would have previously been banned from participating in. However in more remote regions, the Pashtun
culture and tribal cultures still often suppress the rights of women.
s working from home. Since 2002 women have gradually begun to work their way back towards being contributors to the economy. Some women became entrepreneur
s by starting own businesses. For example, Meena Rahmani became the first woman in Afghanistan to open a bowling
center in Kabul. Many others are employed by companies and small businesses.
In the last decade a large number of women became members of the National Assembly of Afghanistan
(Afghan Parliament), such as Shukria Barakzai
, Fauzia Gailani
, Nilofar Ibrahimihttp://www.flickr.com/photos/kabulpublicdiplomacy/5546478172/in/set-72157626313397476/, Fauzia Koofi, Malalai Joya
, and many others. Several women also took positions as ministers
, including Suhaila Seddiqi
, Sima Samar
, Husn Banu Ghazanfar
, and Soraya Dalil. Habiba Sarabi
, who belongs to the minority Hazara group, became the first female governor in Afghanistan. She also served as Minister of Women's Affairs. Azra Jafari
is a female mayor in Nili
, the capital of Daykundi Province.
The Afghan National Police
, Afghan National Army
and Afghan Air Force
have some female officers but many more are being recruited. Their numbers are growing slowly as more women are trained to perform their duty on an international level. Many believe that this will open doors for other institutions to hire women in the future.
Because Afghanistan has a struggling economy overwhelmed with massive unemployment and poverty, women often cannot find work where they receive sufficient pay. One area of the economy where women do play a significant role is in agriculture. Of the 80 percent of Afghans employed in the agriculture field or similar occupations, 30 percent of them are women. In some areas in Afghanistan, women may spend as much time working on the land as men do, but still often earn three times less than men in wages.
In terms of percentage women also rank high in the fields of medicine and media, and are slowly working their way into the field of justice. Because women are still highly encouraged to consult a female physician when they go to the hospital, nearly fifty percent of all Afghans in the medical profession are women. The number of women having professions in the media is also rising. Currently there are more than ten television stations that have all female anchors as well as female producers. As women are given more opportunities in education and the workforce, more of them are turning towards careers in medicine, media, and justice.
However, even the women that are given the opportunity to have careers have to struggle to balance their home life with their work life. Since the economy is so weak, very few women can afford servants so they are forced to take care of all the household work primarily on their own. Those who choose to work must labour twice as hard because they are essentially holding two jobs.
Kabul University was opened to girls in 1947 and by 1973 there was an estimated 150,000 girls in schools across Afghanistan. Unfortunately, marriage at a young age added to the high drop out rate but more and more girls were entering professions that were once viewed as only being for men. Women were being given new opportunities to earn better lives for both themselves and their families. However, in the after the civil war and the takeover by the Taliban, women were stripped of these opportunities and sent back to lives where they were to stay at home and be controlled by their husbands and fathers.
During the Taliban regime, many women who had previously been teachers began secretly giving an education to young girls (as well as some boys) in their neighborhoods, teaching from ten to sixty children at a time. The homes of these women became community homes for girls and women and were entirely financed and managed by women. News about these secret schools spread through word of mouth from woman to woman. Each day young girls would hide all their school supplies, such as books, notebooks and pencils, underneath their burqas and risk their lives to go to school. At these schools, young women were taught basic literary skills, numeracy skills, and various other subjects such as biology, chemistry, English, Quranic Studies, cooking, sewing, and knitting. Many women involved in teaching were caught by the Taliban and persecuted, jailed, and tortured.
Since 2001 many children have returned to school despite opposition by the Taliban. Over the years the Taliban has burned down numerous schools and killed many teachers, yet people still want their children to learn, and the number of Afghan children in schools rises each year. In the first few years after the Taliban was overthrown, education for girls continued to struggle. In 2006 it was reported that 74 percent of girls in Afghanistan dropped out of school before finishing primary school. This high percentage was due to many factors including marriage, family obligations, and a real fear of the Taliban’s continued presence within Afghanistan. However, in subsequent years the number of students in schools continues to rise because people want their children to learn so that they can earn better professions and support the family. Schools keep being opened in Afghanistan and in 2008 there were an estimated 5.8 million children attending schools, roughly 40 percent being girls. As the number the children attending school rises each year, so does the number of girls who are attending.
Arranged marriages are common for women in Afghanistan and they are done mostly for political and economic reasons. A girl's father has the ultimate authority over who he believes his daughter should marry. It is not uncommon for girls to be engaged even before they are born. Girls are often married off at a very young age to wealthy men who are much older than themselves. Reports have even indicated that in the most poverty-stricken areas of rural Afghanistan, families have been reduced to selling their daughters to much older men in exchange for food.
After a marriage is arranged, the two families sign an engagement contract that both parties are socially and culturally obligated to honor. After this contract is signed, the bride is forbidden to marry another man. If the bride dies before the marriage, her family is required to give her sister as a bride or find another desirable replacement.
It is common among low-income families in most areas of the country for the groom to pay a bride price
to the bride's family. The price is negotiated among the heads of the family; the bride herself is not included in the negotiation process. The bride price is viewed as compensation for the money that the bride's family has had to spend on her care and upbringing. There have been many instances where a family is so stricken by poverty that a father will betroth his daughters to multiple men and collect the bride price from each of them. The resulting disputes, although addressed by the courts, often lead to violent reprisals. Girls are sometimes also bartered in a traditional method of dispute resolution called baad
that proponents say helps avoid violence between families, although the girls themselves are often subject to considerable violence both before and after marrying into a family through baad.
Once a girl is married she becomes the property of her new family and continues to have little to no control over her situation. In family matters, the girl's mother-in-law and her husband have the most control. It is the mother-in-law, for example, who decides whether or not her pregnant daughter-in-law should go to the hospital or not.
Only men have the right to divorce their spouses, and a man may divorce his wife without her consent. Social and cultural beliefs make it nearly impossible for a woman to initiate a divorce and it is considered extremely shameful for a woman to want one. However, if a divorce does take place the husband receives custody of all the adult children and the wife receives custody of the young children only until they reach adulthood, at which time the husband receives custody. Divorce is extremely difficult for women to obtain, and divorced women are often treated as social outcasts for the rest of their lives.
is a long garment, covering the entire body, with only a cloth grid allowing the wearer to see out. An early record of this dress was made during the British
exploration of Afghanistan in the First Anglo-Afghan War
when some officers made lithographs
picturing the burqa. During the Taliban regime in the 1990s all women in Afghanistan were forced to wear the burqa in public places.
A burqa is extremely hot to wear and this produces a bad odor inside. Wearers may feel claustrophobic and are at higher risk for asthma. Dust kicked up from the streets sticks to the cloth in front of the mouth that becomes damp from breathing, leading to a sense of suffocation in stale air. The mesh opening severely restricts one's range of vision and is said to be like wearing horse blinders. Consequently, women wearing the burqa often have difficulty even seeing where they are going.
It is impossible to tell whether a woman wearing a burqa is smiling or crying or showing any other emotion. Women say that this leads to a feeling of being completely invisible.
Reports from 2008 stated that many Afghan women were still unable to leave their homes without wearing the burqa, more than six years after the end of the Taliban regime.
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
have suffered through tremendous turmoil in the last three decades or in the last quarter of the past century. Through different rulers such as the Mujahideen
Mujahideen
Mujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...
and the Taliban in the later part of the century, women have struggled to gain freedoms and reform a society that is primarily male dominant.
Overview
Since AfghanistanAfghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
was officially declared a country in the mid eighteenth century, it has suffered from weakness due to the different tribal groups and ethnicities. Of all of the tribal groups, the Pashtuns
Pashtun people
Pashtuns or Pathans , also known as ethnic Afghans , are an Eastern Iranic ethnic group with populations primarily between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan...
are the largest and then followed by Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks
Uzbeks
The Uzbeks are a Turkic ethnic group in Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China...
and others. From the late nineteenth century and through the twentieth century the rulers of Afghanistan consistently attempted to lessen women's restrictions in the country. For the most part, these attempts were unsuccessful; however, there were a few leaders who were able to make some significant changes for the time period. Among them was King Amanullah Khan
Amanullah Khan
Amanullah Khan was the King of the Emirate of Afghanistan from 1919 to 1929, first as Amir and after 1926 as Shah. He led Afghanistan to independence over its foreign affairs from the United Kingdom, and his rule was marked by dramatic political and social change...
, who ruled from 1919 to 1929 and made some of the more noteworthy changes in an attempt to unify as well as modernize the country.
Amanullah Khan, along with other rulers following him, promoted freedom for women in the public sphere in order to lessen the control that patriarchal families had over women. Amanhullah Khan stressed the importance for young girls and women to receive an education. Along with encouraging families to send their daughters to school, he promoted the unveiling of women and persuaded them to adopt a more western style of dress. In 1921, he created a law that abolished forced marriage, child marriage, bride price, and put restrictions on polygamy
Polygamy
Polygamy is a marriage which includes more than two partners...
, a common practice among households in Afghanistan. However, over time these restrictions became nearly impossible to enforce.
Throughout the nineteenth century, Afghanistan continued to be a country dominated by tribes and men continued to have ultimate control over women. In 1973 the state was declared a republic and throughout the 1970s and 1980s a communist group called the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan was a communist party established on the 1 January 1965. While a minority, the party helped former president of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, to overthrow his cousin, Mohammed Zahir Shah, and established Daoud's Republic of Afghanistan...
(PDPA) took over and attempted to once again reform the marriage laws, women's health laws, and encouraged women's education. During this time Afghanistan made significant advances towards modernization. Minorities of women were able to hold jobs as scientists, teachers, doctors, and civil servants and had a considerable amount of freedom with significant educational opportunities. The majority of women however, lived in poverty and were excluded from these opportunities. In 1977, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan
The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan is a women's organization based in Quetta, Pakistan, that promotes women's rights and secular democracy...
(RAWA) was founded by Meena Keshwar Kamal
Meena Keshwar Kamal
Meena Keshwar Kamal , commonly known as Meena, was an Afghan feminist, women's rights activist and founder of RAWA, who was assassinated in 1987.-Biography:...
in Kabul but her office was moved to Quetta
Quetta
is the largest city and the provincial capital of the Balochistan Province of Pakistan. Known as the "Fruit Garden of Pakistan" due to the diversity of its plant and animal wildlife, Quetta is home to the Hazarganji Chiltan National Park, which contains some of the rarest species of wildlife in the...
in neighboring Pakistan where she was assassinated in 1987. Rawa still operates in the region of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Mujahideen and Taliban era
In April 1992, Afghanistan erupted into a civil war when the Mujahideen took over. The Mujahideen were split into seven different factions who all vied for power leading the country into a violent bloodbath. The Mujahideen declared that all women were to wear a veil and demanded that women who appeared on television be fired. During the violent four-year civil war many women were kidnapped or raped. By the time one of the factions became victorious many people welcomed this new leading force known as the Taliban.The Taliban are mostly Pashtuns who are almost entirely educated in Wahhabi schools in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. Immediately after coming into power, the Taliban declared that women were forbidden to go to work and they were not to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male family member. When they did go out it was required that they had to wear an all-covering burqa
Burqa
A burqa is an enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic religion to cover their bodies in public places. The burqa is usually understood to be the woman's loose body-covering , plus the head-covering , plus the face-veil .-Etymology:A speculative and unattested etymology...
. Under these restrictions, women were denied an education and were refused health care. Many women were unable to leave their households at all because they couldn’t afford a burqa or they no longer had any male relatives. These women were forced to stay at home and paint their windows so that no one could see in or out. During the Taliban’s rule, women in Afghanistan were essentially put under house arrest and women who once held respectable positions were forced to wander the streets in their burqas selling everything they owned and begging in order to survive.
Because most teachers had been women before the Taliban regime, the new restrictions on women’s employment created a huge lack of teachers, which put an immense strain on the education of both boys and girls. Although women were banned from most jobs, including teaching, women in the medical field were mostly allowed to continue working. This is because the Taliban required that women could be treated only by female physicians. However, women working in the medical field suffered greatly: women who were doctors and nurses were often beaten or had to watch their female colleagues get beaten. Moreover, for several reasons, it was difficult for women to seek medical attention. It was extremely frowned upon for women to need to go to a hospital, and women who did try to go to a hospital were often beaten. Even when a woman was able to make it to a hospital she had no guarantee that she would be seen by a doctor.
Karzai administration
After the September 11th attacks on the United States, the U.S. led a bombing campaign on al-QaedaAl-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
militants in Afghanistan that ultimately led to the overthrow of the Taliban in November 2001. The Karzai administration has relaxed policies around women's rights, and in Kabul
Kabul
Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...
women now can be seen driving cars and engaging in other activities that they would have previously been banned from participating in. However in more remote regions, the Pashtun
Pashtun people
Pashtuns or Pathans , also known as ethnic Afghans , are an Eastern Iranic ethnic group with populations primarily between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan...
culture and tribal cultures still often suppress the rights of women.
Politics and workforce
The most popular traditional work for women in Afghanistan is tailoring, and a large percentage of the population are professional tailorTailor
A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor took on its modern sense in the late eighteenth century, and now refers to makers of men's and women's suits, coats, trousers,...
s working from home. Since 2002 women have gradually begun to work their way back towards being contributors to the economy. Some women became entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
s by starting own businesses. For example, Meena Rahmani became the first woman in Afghanistan to open a bowling
Bowling
Bowling Bowling Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule Bowling (1375–1425; late Middle English bowle, variant of boule...
center in Kabul. Many others are employed by companies and small businesses.
In the last decade a large number of women became members of the National Assembly of Afghanistan
National Assembly of Afghanistan
The National Assembly is Afghanistan's national legislature. It is a bicameral body, comprising two chambers:*Wolesi Jirga or the House of the People: the 250-member lower house.*Meshrano Jirga ) or the House of Elders: an upper house with 102 seats....
(Afghan Parliament), such as Shukria Barakzai
Shukria Barakzai
Shukria Barakzai is an Afghan politician, journalist and entrepreneur, and a prominent Muslim feminist.-Early life:She was born in 1972 in Kabul, Afghanistan...
, Fauzia Gailani
Fauzia Gailani
Fauzia Gailani was elected to represent Herat Province in Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of its National Legislature, in 2005.She won almost 16,885 votes, more than any other candidate in Herat....
, Nilofar Ibrahimihttp://www.flickr.com/photos/kabulpublicdiplomacy/5546478172/in/set-72157626313397476/, Fauzia Koofi, Malalai Joya
Malalai Joya
Malalai Joya is an activist, writer and a former politician from Afghanistan. She served as a Parliamentarian in the National Assembly of Afghanistan from 2005 until early 2007, after being dismissed for publicly denouncing the presence of what she considered to be warlords and war criminals in...
, and many others. Several women also took positions as ministers
Council of Ministers (Afghanistan)
The Council of Ministers was the governmental organ in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and later the Republic of Afghanistan. The leader of the Council of Ministers choose ministers for the different ministeral posts in the country. Under the leadership of Nur Mohammad Taraki, Hafizullah...
, including Suhaila Seddiqi
Suhaila Seddiqi
General Suhaila Seddiqi , often referred to as General Suhaila, is a retired politcian from Afghanistan. She served as the Minister of Public Health from December 2001 to around 2008. Prior to that she worked as a surgeon general in the military of Afghanistan.As a government minister, she is...
, Sima Samar
Sima Samar
Dr. Sima Samar OC is a politician in Afghanistan, who served as Minister of Women's Affairs of Afghanistan from December 2001 to 2003...
, Husn Banu Ghazanfar
Husn Banu Ghazanfar
Prof. Husn Banu Ghazanfar is a politician in Afghanistan, serving as the Minister of Women's Affairs. She is also a writer, a poet, and a speaker.-Early life and education:...
, and Soraya Dalil. Habiba Sarabi
Habiba Sarabi
Dr. Habiba Sarabi is a hematologist, politician, and reformer of the post-Taliban reconstruction of Afghanistan. In 2005, she was appointed as governor of Bamyan Province by President Hamid Karzai, becoming the first woman to ever be a governor of any province in the country...
, who belongs to the minority Hazara group, became the first female governor in Afghanistan. She also served as Minister of Women's Affairs. Azra Jafari
Azra Jafari
Azra Jafari was named by President Hamid Karzai as mayor of Nili, the capital of Daykundi Province in December 2008, thus becoming Afghanistan's first female city mayor. She was a refugee in Iran for several years under the Taliban...
is a female mayor in Nili
Nili, Afghanistan
Nili is the capital city of Nili District, Daykundi Province, Afghanistan. The town of Nili is at 2,022 m altitude and has a small airport with a gravel runway and a commercial radio station...
, the capital of Daykundi Province.
The Afghan National Police
Afghan National Police
The Afghan National Police - ANP - is the primary national police force in Afghanistan. It serves as a single law enforcement agency all across the country. The Afghan police force was first created with the establishment of the Afghan nation in the early 18th century...
, Afghan National Army
Afghan National Army
The Afghan National Army is a service branch of the military of Afghanistan, which is currently trained by the coalition forces to ultimately take the role in land-based military operations in Afghanistan. , the Afghan National Army is divided into seven regional Corps. The strength of the Afghan...
and Afghan Air Force
Afghan Air Force
The Afghan Air Force , formerly the Afghan National Army Air Corps and Afghan National Army Air Force , is one of seven "corps" of the military of Afghanistan, responsible for air defense and air warfare. It was officially established in 1924 and for most of its history has functioned as a small...
have some female officers but many more are being recruited. Their numbers are growing slowly as more women are trained to perform their duty on an international level. Many believe that this will open doors for other institutions to hire women in the future.
Because Afghanistan has a struggling economy overwhelmed with massive unemployment and poverty, women often cannot find work where they receive sufficient pay. One area of the economy where women do play a significant role is in agriculture. Of the 80 percent of Afghans employed in the agriculture field or similar occupations, 30 percent of them are women. In some areas in Afghanistan, women may spend as much time working on the land as men do, but still often earn three times less than men in wages.
In terms of percentage women also rank high in the fields of medicine and media, and are slowly working their way into the field of justice. Because women are still highly encouraged to consult a female physician when they go to the hospital, nearly fifty percent of all Afghans in the medical profession are women. The number of women having professions in the media is also rising. Currently there are more than ten television stations that have all female anchors as well as female producers. As women are given more opportunities in education and the workforce, more of them are turning towards careers in medicine, media, and justice.
However, even the women that are given the opportunity to have careers have to struggle to balance their home life with their work life. Since the economy is so weak, very few women can afford servants so they are forced to take care of all the household work primarily on their own. Those who choose to work must labour twice as hard because they are essentially holding two jobs.
Education
In the early twentieth century, education for women was extremely rare due to the lack of schools for girls. Occasionally girls were able to receive an education on the primary level but they never moved past the secondary level. During King Zaher Shah's reign in the mid twentieth century education for women became a priority and young girls began being sent to schools. At these schools, girls were taught discipline, new technologies, ideas, and socialization in society.During the Taliban regime, many women who had previously been teachers began secretly giving an education to young girls (as well as some boys) in their neighborhoods, teaching from ten to sixty children at a time. The homes of these women became community homes for girls and women and were entirely financed and managed by women. News about these secret schools spread through word of mouth from woman to woman. Each day young girls would hide all their school supplies, such as books, notebooks and pencils, underneath their burqas and risk their lives to go to school. At these schools, young women were taught basic literary skills, numeracy skills, and various other subjects such as biology, chemistry, English, Quranic Studies, cooking, sewing, and knitting. Many women involved in teaching were caught by the Taliban and persecuted, jailed, and tortured.
Since 2001 many children have returned to school despite opposition by the Taliban. Over the years the Taliban has burned down numerous schools and killed many teachers, yet people still want their children to learn, and the number of Afghan children in schools rises each year. In the first few years after the Taliban was overthrown, education for girls continued to struggle. In 2006 it was reported that 74 percent of girls in Afghanistan dropped out of school before finishing primary school. This high percentage was due to many factors including marriage, family obligations, and a real fear of the Taliban’s continued presence within Afghanistan. However, in subsequent years the number of students in schools continues to rise because people want their children to learn so that they can earn better professions and support the family. Schools keep being opened in Afghanistan and in 2008 there were an estimated 5.8 million children attending schools, roughly 40 percent being girls. As the number the children attending school rises each year, so does the number of girls who are attending.
Marriage and parenting
Afghanistan is a patriarchal society where it is commonly believed that men are entitled to make decisions for women, include those pertaining to engagement and marriage.Arranged marriages are common for women in Afghanistan and they are done mostly for political and economic reasons. A girl's father has the ultimate authority over who he believes his daughter should marry. It is not uncommon for girls to be engaged even before they are born. Girls are often married off at a very young age to wealthy men who are much older than themselves. Reports have even indicated that in the most poverty-stricken areas of rural Afghanistan, families have been reduced to selling their daughters to much older men in exchange for food.
After a marriage is arranged, the two families sign an engagement contract that both parties are socially and culturally obligated to honor. After this contract is signed, the bride is forbidden to marry another man. If the bride dies before the marriage, her family is required to give her sister as a bride or find another desirable replacement.
It is common among low-income families in most areas of the country for the groom to pay a bride price
Bride price
Bride price, also known as bride wealth, is an amount of money or property or wealth paid by the groom or his family to the parents of a woman upon the marriage of their daughter to the groom...
to the bride's family. The price is negotiated among the heads of the family; the bride herself is not included in the negotiation process. The bride price is viewed as compensation for the money that the bride's family has had to spend on her care and upbringing. There have been many instances where a family is so stricken by poverty that a father will betroth his daughters to multiple men and collect the bride price from each of them. The resulting disputes, although addressed by the courts, often lead to violent reprisals. Girls are sometimes also bartered in a traditional method of dispute resolution called baad
Baad (practice)
Baad is a traditional practice of settling disputes in Pakistan and Afghanistan among Pushtun tribes in which a young girl is traded to settle a dispute for her older relatives. This may involve being used as payment for a financial dispute, as a means to avoid larger or longer-lasting arguments...
that proponents say helps avoid violence between families, although the girls themselves are often subject to considerable violence both before and after marrying into a family through baad.
Once a girl is married she becomes the property of her new family and continues to have little to no control over her situation. In family matters, the girl's mother-in-law and her husband have the most control. It is the mother-in-law, for example, who decides whether or not her pregnant daughter-in-law should go to the hospital or not.
Only men have the right to divorce their spouses, and a man may divorce his wife without her consent. Social and cultural beliefs make it nearly impossible for a woman to initiate a divorce and it is considered extremely shameful for a woman to want one. However, if a divorce does take place the husband receives custody of all the adult children and the wife receives custody of the young children only until they reach adulthood, at which time the husband receives custody. Divorce is extremely difficult for women to obtain, and divorced women are often treated as social outcasts for the rest of their lives.
The Burqa
The burqaBurqa
A burqa is an enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic religion to cover their bodies in public places. The burqa is usually understood to be the woman's loose body-covering , plus the head-covering , plus the face-veil .-Etymology:A speculative and unattested etymology...
is a long garment, covering the entire body, with only a cloth grid allowing the wearer to see out. An early record of this dress was made during the British
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
exploration of Afghanistan in the First Anglo-Afghan War
First Anglo-Afghan War
The First Anglo-Afghan War was fought between British India and Afghanistan from 1839 to 1842. It was one of the first major conflicts during the Great Game, the 19th century competition for power and influence in Central Asia between the United Kingdom and Russia, and also marked one of the worst...
when some officers made lithographs
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
picturing the burqa. During the Taliban regime in the 1990s all women in Afghanistan were forced to wear the burqa in public places.
A burqa is extremely hot to wear and this produces a bad odor inside. Wearers may feel claustrophobic and are at higher risk for asthma. Dust kicked up from the streets sticks to the cloth in front of the mouth that becomes damp from breathing, leading to a sense of suffocation in stale air. The mesh opening severely restricts one's range of vision and is said to be like wearing horse blinders. Consequently, women wearing the burqa often have difficulty even seeing where they are going.
It is impossible to tell whether a woman wearing a burqa is smiling or crying or showing any other emotion. Women say that this leads to a feeling of being completely invisible.
Reports from 2008 stated that many Afghan women were still unable to leave their homes without wearing the burqa, more than six years after the end of the Taliban regime.
See also
- Malalai JoyaMalalai JoyaMalalai Joya is an activist, writer and a former politician from Afghanistan. She served as a Parliamentarian in the National Assembly of Afghanistan from 2005 until early 2007, after being dismissed for publicly denouncing the presence of what she considered to be warlords and war criminals in...
- Revolutionary Association of the Women of AfghanistanRevolutionary Association of the Women of AfghanistanThe Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan is a women's organization based in Quetta, Pakistan, that promotes women's rights and secular democracy...
- Prostitution in AfghanistanProstitution in AfghanistanProstitution in Afghanistan is illegal, with punishments ranging from 5 to 15 years imprisonment. Despite being deeply religious and one of the most conservative countries in the world, where sex outside marriage is against the law, some prostitution activities are reported in the capital Kabul as...