Bacha Posh Case Study

Men in the Taliban’s Afghanistan are viewed as gods in their own house while the women are not even seen. This view causes the men to have unrealistic expectations for their wives including expect them to have children who are male. They can also control were the women can and can’t go, and they prevail over them in a court of law. Rasheed has always wanted a son. When he marries Mariam and he finds out that she's pregnant he goes out to buy his hypothetical son a coat. When Mariam has a miscarriage his attitude towards her changes and he starts to become more harsh towards her. The same thing happens with Laila except that instead of a miscarriage she has a girl. When Laila finally has a boy Rasheed immediately favors him over his daughter.

. The author conveys a very cautionary yet distressing tone when elaborating about the hardships of Afghanistan women’s love life. According to the thesis statement of “Afghanistan : Where women have no choice”, Sieff interprets his distressing tone when he said “ For an Afghan girl dreading marriage to a man she hates, death is of

Amira Arzu, an Afghan teenager, was only 15 years old when she was forced into an arranged marriage. She was kind hearted, intelligent, elated, and humorous until one day this was all taken away. December 15th, 2016 she was on her way to school in Afghanistan not knowing that her parents were driving her to a Mosque, the Shrine of Ali, to get married to her future husband, Ahmed Akmal. A few days later she found herself on the street Taimani in Kabul, Afghanistan. Amira ran past workers ordering from street carts, women with their children, men in trucks honking at one another, and many looked at her uncertainty as she was running through the streets of Kabul. At the time, she was wearing a blue floral hijab, jeans, and a dress as in Afghanistan you cannot wear a dress without covering your legs. Many deduced that she was without her husband on the streets of Kabul, which is not normally the case, but Amira was different from the other wives and arduously wanting to figure out an escape.

Those families allow them to roam freely as boys, with the tacit acceptance of others in their communities which I think is not right to do. I feel that they have to stick with their sex gender and not because of pride which in this case is the main reason why those families do that. At adolescence, most designate young boys are switched back to young women, a transformation that can be traumatic for those accustomed to their assumed male identities in my opinion. I slowly came to the conclusion that the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the arrival of a daughter is often mourned as misfortune.“The Underground Girls of Kabul” does not seek out the stereotypically oppressed, but rather shows Afghan women as active agents navigating a culture that often disadvantages them and making the most of their limited options for freedom and

Khaled Hosseini presents the struggle Afghan women go through every day by discussing honour, marriage and the place of women in society in Afghanistan.

With this in mind one can see how maintaining family connection in Afghanistan is the best way to reach success. Men and women have different roles within these households as well. Ultimately their actions bring honor or shame onto their family based off of these roles, for instance while men work to provide income, women receive great honor through being a good wife and mother (Fluri, 2011). These methods gaining honor or shame often stem from their Muslim religion which carries over into their social lives. Afghan women typically wore long baggy clothing such as burqas as they are modest and provided them with a sense of spatial privacy (Fluri, 2011). They also wore their clothing such as a hijab is seen necessary as a sign of respect to their god as the people around them (Fluri, 2011). They also also hold power within the household through social networking for her family, giving her the responsibility to extend the family contacts through this manner and control who the family is associated with (Fluri, 2011). Women would traditionally gather in places void of men forming their own social sphere to better themselves and their families(Schütte,2014). Women even sometimes marry for the sake of creating a permanent connection to another family. All of these concepts are completely foreign to westerners as we don’t socialize in this manner, but even if we don’t except their social norms, that doesn’t give us a right to critique it.

"The Girl Effect" is an idea that educational influences and medical support at an early age can bring girls out of poverty for themselves and continue down the line for future generations as a domino effect; in A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, the two main characters are two young poor women in Afghanistan. Mariam's and Laila's experiences highlight "The Girl Effect" in that Liala demonstrates the significant benefits of a girl growing up with an educational background, while Mariam who was not educated at a young age, has her future out of her hands and is married by fifteen, has many failed pregnancies and is forced to deal with the abusive relationship. In Afghanistan many girls are seen as women at the age of twelve-years-old

Women seem to continually face the grandest penalties for the most insignificant crimes in Afghanistan. Where as men have a birthright to enjoy all life has to offer. This is eye opening toward Rasheed’s motivations for wanting a son instead of a daughter with his wives. Initially we believe that he hopes to have a boy to replace the son he previously lost, but taking a deeper look at the quality of life men have over women, it is safe to say a boy will have more opportunities in his future than a girl would. Rasheed’s negative actions toward Laila giving birth to a girl (Aziza) now seem to have context. Aziza is worthless to Rasheed in his eyes because to him, women are insignificant to society. Women grow up only to be married off at a young

In most societies, men feel the need to reinforce the idea of their superiority upon women, so thus they use religion to prove their dominance. A Talib told Mariam of how ‘God made us differently’(Hosseini 324). These “differences” that the Talib speaks of is one of main ways patriarchy is defended, since God made man and woman differently, the Afghan community assumes that they must be treated differently as well. Also, there must be one sex that is superior to the other then, many communities along with the Afghan community chose to place men above women due to sexist beliefs of the

As a second generation Indian American woman, much of my experience as a gendered person has been shaped by familial values, especially those regarding the respective roles of men and women in the Indian household. The combination of a highly patriarchal society and an emphasis on family as the most dominant institution in Indian life translates to a family in which women are subordinate to men in every way. My gendered experience in an Indian family unit was not as extreme as traditional families in India due to the privilege I had of growing up in an upper-middle class socioeconomic household in a progressive American society. However, gender expectations in my family were rooted in the South Asian immigrant experience, exemplified through

Growing up and living in Afghanistan as a woman has its challenges. Parents choose who can marry you and they choose everything for you. In this book, Laila and Mariam both show the struggles it is to be a girl, and how much disrespect they get in Afghanistan. Both Mariam and Laila are married to the same man, and he is abusive to both of them. They also live under Taliban rule, and the rules that they set are very unfair for women. In Khaled Hosseni’s novel, he has many different themes but the most prevalent one is of woman inequality, and that is shown through multiple accounts of abuse, disrespect, and unfairness.

Today in the post –Taliban era, women still struggle with their rights. Resolutions were produced and rights for women have advanced since September 11th but in order to move forward, much work needs to be done. Hundreds of years of repression for Afghan women will take a lot longer than a few years to actually revolutionize. There is violence towards women that are not practicing traditions customs and fear retaliations from the Taliban. Customs are difficult to change as well as government policies. (Bora Laskin Law). In Afghanistan, religious and cultural values, politics, and an uncertain acting government have played a major part in the struggle for women’s rights.

Religion goes hand in hand with culture, and in the Muslim countries this is very apparent. The cultural importance of men over women may have stemmed from religion, however it was further recognized when imperialist countries introduced capitalism and class divides. “Islam must combat the wrenching impact of alien forces whose influence in economic, political, and cultural permutations continues to prevail” (Stowasser 1994, 5). Now, instead of an agrarian state where both men and women had their place, difficulties have formed due to the rise in education and awareness that women can and do have a place in society beyond domestic living Though women are not equal to men anywhere around the

Girls, young women, and mature mothers. Society has consistently given women strict guidelines, rules and principles on how to be an appropriate member of a man’s society. These rules are set at a young age and enforced thoroughly into adulthood. When not followed accordingly, women often times too many face reprimanding through means of verbal abuse, physical abuse, or social exile. In the midst of all these strict guidelines and social etiquette for girls, a social rebellion started among girls and women and gender roles were broken, however the social rebellion did not and does not affect all girls and women. For instance, in less socially developed places, young girls on the brink of womanhood are still strongly persuaded to be a man’s idea of a “woman”.

They dint bear equal stature at birth; baby boys are consistently desired and greeted into a moderate family of Pakistan.