Osama Gender

“Women like us. We endure.” (Hosseini, 19). For the female protagonists Laila and Mariam in the novel A 1000 Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini and the two unnamed female protagonists of the movie Osama, oppression is something they face and endure everyday. Both stories take place in Afghanistan around the 1990’s and 2000’s. In A 1000 Splendid Suns, the two female protagonists, Laila and Mariam, are wives to Rasheed, an abusive Islamic shoe maker (220). In the movie Osama, there are three generations living in one small home: a grandmother, mother, and a daughter. They have lost all of their male relatives who have died from fighting various Afghan wars (Osama). Osama and A 1000 Splendid Suns both display how women are oppressed and how it

The story is told from the point of view of Latifa, a girl oppressed by the Taliban. When the Taliban storm her home city of Kabul in Afghanistan, Latifa and her family (particularly her female relatives and family) become

The film is centered on a group known as the Women’s Army. It is a group comprised of women who seek to eradicate the ever-present inequalities between males and females. They end up going on marches, networking with different radio shows and meeting together in order to find ways to educate women and the general public about the hypocritical nature of the government and its role in the social and economic status of women. In the beginning of the film we see men catcalling women as they walk down the street, harassing them while riding the subways, and even attempting to rape them in broad daylight. This highlights the impact of societies ideology about gender

One cultural facet of Afghanistan that really stood out was what controlling husbands do to their “unimportant” wives which Hosseini was quite candid about. Firstly, in one example, Rasheed is so upset with Mariam’s cooking, that he goes out, brings some pebbles in, and forces her to chew on them until her molars crack (Hosseini 94). This scene shows that husbands were in complete control in nearly every household, and the wives could not do anything. Secondly, when Laila and Rasheed are having an argument about what to do with their daughter Aziza (because they have become poor and it is hard to support all of them as it is), Rasheed becomes extremely infuriated and puts the barrel of his gun down Laila’s throat (Hosseini 267). After reading this, one can easily infer that in a controlling relationship, especially in Afghanistan, the husband can literally do whatever

There were three major “waves” of feminist action that took place in the 1900’s. The most recent and most closely resembling the film is the “third wave” taking place in the early 1990’s. The “third wave” feminist mainly focused on micro politics but also sought after negotiating a space within feminist thought for deliberation of race-related subjectivities. In the film, a woman was brutally beaten by a man for laughing at his small penis. The girl’s friends found out what happened and sought to acquire revenge on the two men that committed this hurtful crime. The gang of vengeful women manage to scavenge one thousand dollars of their own savings as a reward for anyone who kills the two men. The gang of women acts as the feminist movement in the 1990’s but there is

In both the movie Osama and the book Nujood Ali: Age 10 and Divorced have the men overruling the women, as in the book, Faez Ali Thamer abuses Nujood sexually and physically and in Osama the Taliban abuse the women physically. There are a lot of fascinating similarities between the film and the

The second aspect of the regime that really amazed me was how the women are treated under the Taliban rule. Every woman must wear a burqa veil no matter where she is going. If a woman is found outside of her house with out her veil on she can be whipped or

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 characteristics of a man which should be strong, confident, overbearing, and sex-driven and the characteristics of a woman which should be quiet, obedient, and nurturing. When the Talib mentions of how “we require only one male witness but two female ones”(Hosseini 324) in the court process, he reveals the extent to which patriarchal views are woven into the fabric of society, as far as the criminal justice process. For Mariam, this means that her chances of winning in court is very low since there was only one witness, another woman, Laila, so the court is less likely to believe or take into account Laila’s words. Religion impacts Mariam’s life by plaguing the minds of the courts and judges with her inferiority as a woman which inevitably leads to a flawed rationale rectifying her severe punishment as a result.

Each culture has expectations and traditions that each person is expected to follow, those who do not conform are branded as outcasts. These expectations are exhausting and cause inner conflict within society. The novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, is about the pressure of adhering to the unwritten rules of cultural expectations. The novel’s themes can be compared to the lives of women in the the Middle-East and their push for equality. The documentary, He Named Me Malala by David Guggenheim, follows the story of Malala Yousafzai and her push for women’s education in Pakistan, and the suppression of the Taliban. Guggenheim’s documentary highlights Malala’s trouble with changing her culture's expectations for women and the sadness in wake of that issue. The TED Talks from Alaa Murabit, What My Religion Really Says About Women, explains her experience with loss of innocence when she moved from Canada to Libya. An article from The Guardian, Majority of men in the Middle East survey believe a woman's place is at home, exposes the truth of men’s expectations of women in the Middle East and the women’s ambition to achieve more. The constructs and rules enforced by the culture that engulfs a person causes oppression and damage to their mental health.

NFN Blog Post Submission Document Your Topic: Women's Rights Are Human Rights Please copy and paste your entire blog post - with images and all - below this line. I wasn’t aware of how horrific Women's treatment under the Taliban was until I dug into the reality of it in Under The Persimmon Tree (UTPT), by Suzanne Fisher. In arts of the world such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, women are treated as second class citizens. They are looked upon with no respect and live with restricted rights, all due to the fact that they happen to not be men. The main characters Najmah and Nusrat in the story UTPT experience this unfair treatment first hand.

In her memoir the princess Sultana expresses how she was looked down upon by the men of her country and how she was never loved by her father due to the lack of a male organ. She also describes that men are taught from an early age that they are superior to women in every way. They grow up witnessing their fathers abuse the women of the family, which leads them to scorn all females. By the time an Arab man marries he treats his wife as a virtual slave who must obey his every command. Throughout her life she witnesses many events that demonstrate these beliefs. Some of her earliest memories are of her older brother Ali and the abuses she suffered because of him (Sasson ch.1). The worst tragedy that occurred in the book was the marrying of Sultana’s sixteen year old sister to a man of sixty-eight. After five weeks of marriage her sister tried to commit suicide. Her husband was a sadistic who subjected her sister to horrible sexual

In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam and Laila are learning to live in a war zone when the Taliban gains control of their country. Consequently, the Taliban's laws are one source of major female inequality within

Gender discrimination is a very big issue in Pakistan, more specifically Malala’s village of Swat, as shown through the book I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai. For example, Rohul Amin, Malala’s grandfather, showed discrimination to his own daughters! The discrimination was shown on page 29 when Malala states, “School wasn’t the only thing my aunts missed out on. In the morning when my father was given a bowl of cream with his tea, his sisters were given only tea. If there were eggs, they would only be for the boys. When a chicken was slaughtered for dinner, the girls would get the wings and the neck while the luscious breast meat was enjoyed by my father, his brother and my grandfather” (Yousafzai 29), Amin has his own daughters grow up knowing that they’re seen as lesser than which is crazy on so many levels. Therefore, gender discrimination is a social issue and shown through Rohul Amin’s treatment of his daughters. In addition, the murder of a dancer and singer, Shabana, was

Gender inequality in the workplace is one of the biggest multicultural issue in society over the decades. Everyone in the world should be treated fairly. In the past, Taliban has conquered Afghanistan and forbidding women's for going to work. For example, in the movie " Osama ", shows that women in Afghanistan are protesting for their rights to work as a female but were chased out by the army using high water pressure to keep them away. This movie is about a 12 year old girl name Osama and her mother lose their jobs when the hospital where they work were closed by Taliban forcing Osama to disguise as a boy to continue working in order to support her family because his father died during war. In fact, Females in Afghanistan have to depend on

The Taliban implemented laws restricting the movements and actions of women in Afghanistan in public places. While attempting to visit her child in a home for young girls, Laila is beaten within an inch of her life as a consequence of walking outside without a male escort (Hosseini). The extreme course of action, beating a woman for walking alone, demonstrates the illogical and unjustifiable actions the Taliban promotes the practice of in Afghanistan. The women and men have dramatically unequal rights.