Essay on Women Led Organizations in Afghanistan

The Taliban had a large number of restrictions placed on the rights of Afghan women. They were not allowed to work anywhere outside of their home. This meant that a woman could not be a professional in any type of job. Women also could not deal with any male shopkeeper or doctors.

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.

Women wanted to improve education in both university courses and at a school level. They wanted to open up career opportunities for girls that were once just meant for men, some examples of these were in sport and science. While this was happening other women were focussing on meeting women’s specific safety and health needs, this included greater access to contraception, abortion, and protection from domestic violence.

The Constitution that was created in Afghanistan during the 1920’s, stated equal rights for women and men. In fact, during the year of 1959, new policies created educational and career opportunities and voluntary removal of having to wear the burka. Women’s roles become similarly equivalent to male roles; they had the opportunity to acquire knowledge from universities, and were provided jobs in industrial, business, and entertainment settings. The atrocities that came about during the Mujaheddin and Taliban control were unheard of years prior, when women lived in peace and prosperity

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.

March 4th 2014: During the 2014 election, the State Minister calls for participation involving both men and women, saying “The full and meaningful participation of Afghan women in society is critical to ensuring Afghanistan’s sustainable development and economic prosperity in the years to come.”

Prior to the rise of the Taliban, life for women in Afghanistan was improving dramatically. In Laila’s father’s words, “Women have always had it hard in this country… But it’s true, it’s a good time to be a woman in Afghanistan” (Hosseini 121). Women were able to teach in universities and schools and even hold office in the government. However, once the Taliban came to power in 1996, women were stripped of their basic rights and practically ordered on house arrest.

In a male dominated society, the women of Afghanistan face many pressures and limits that are taught and ingrained in them at a very young age. Women and girls are seen as less than men and boys. They are viewed as being weak and unimportant. They are often pulled out of school and shunned to the house during their middle school years. Society sees no reason to educate girls when the whole point of girls is to serve as wives to their husbands and mothers to sons. They are taught that their entire worth depends on how happy they make their husband. As depicted by Jenny Norberg in The Underground Girls of Kabul, Afghanistan is a horrible place to be a woman. The pressure to birth sons, uphold a perfect reputation, and the economic disadvantages women face often force them to become men to have basic human respect and survival.

Before the rise of the Taliban in the early 1990s, women in Afghanistan were mostly treated as equals and with respect. Though women were still expected to be

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

Women everywhere in our culture were having similar experiences of unfair treatment because of being female, so they banded together to improve their social and professional status. Women created several support systems for each other, because they knew that the only way to bring about change was in numbers. The League of Women Voters set a precedent over 50 years ago as a successful organization made to ensure women the same voting rights as men. There are now such

Since the beginning of time, women have had to fight rigorously for basic human rights. In the western stratosphere, those human rights were achieved in the early 20th century, but in a lot of eastern countries the battle for the women is just beginning, or worse hasn't even started. Women in Afghanistan have been subject to heinous circumstances, even though their religion, Islam "demanded that men and women be equal before God,"(Qazi). Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner offers a very insightful view of the governing politics of Afghanistan pre-Taliban regime and during the Taliban regime, and the differing situation of women in both those eras. Based on the book and outside research, it is evident that the situation of women in

The reason I chose to study Islamic Feminism and Afghanistan, is that for many people, these words do not belong in the same sentence. Afghanistan has come to be recognized as a country that follows strict and fundamentalist Islam, hindering the lives of women and even damaging their lives. Since I entered high school, Afghanistan has been known to me and my generation as a country

Because of this strict law that was implemented throughout all of Afghanistan by the Taliban, women were stripped of any rights or freedoms they enjoyed. This was the fall of women’s rights in Afghanistan and to this day has affected the way that women in Afghanistan live. Woman during the Taliban control were denied health care, which included healthcare to have children. This imposed many health problems because women in Afghanistan have on average around 6 children. 30-40% of women’s healthcare problems were related to this. The literacy rate of women in Afghanistan, although never that high, was even lower because women were restricted from being educated or employed and many of them were forced into prostitution. The women were banned from leaving the house without either their brother or father present. The were banned from being involved in politics or public speaking and what we notice most is women were banned from showing their skin in public which meant they needed to be covered from head to toe. Women were basically invisible in public life and were prisoners within their own home. Punishments for disobeying any of these laws were extremely harsh and mostly lead to being stoned to death or

Muslim sub-cultures also have a difference of opinion when it comes to women being educated or having knowledge of politics. It is a problem that women in Afghanistan do not know about their country’s politics, let alone global politics. This is especially important in a time of war or conflict. The opinions of Muslim women are, for the most part, “absent from public debates” and work needs to be done to inquire about the diverse opinions of Muslim women (Ryan 1046). Furthermore, girls being educated, starting at an early age would help in diminishing this problem by knowing how to read and write. Afghanistan’s women still straggle distantly in the wake of a strong margin of the women around the world in terms of communicating their political