Hi Brenda and all,

I've been reading the posts on women in Afghanistan with great 
interest. It seems that in the last few months, I have been watching 
the "re-awakening" of women in Afghanistan -- not only among Afghan 
women -- but in  their visibility to people in the United States!

Just in the past 3 months, WE LEARN has been approached about bringing 
representatives from RAWA to present at the WE LEARN conference (soooo 
wish we could afford that!), and to include some writings by Afghani 
women in our student health writing initiative on women's heath and 
well-being.

Also, this past October, I did a presentation for 10 Afghani women who 
had been hosted by ITD (Institute for Training and Development) in 
Amherst, MA to learn more about literacy teaching (in general, not only 
for women). WE LEARN did a presentation on women's literacy issues and 
resources. I only spent a few hours with them and wished I could have 
more time to learn more from them. They were both administrators and 
service-providers. The 10 women were from various NGOs -- several they 
had founded on their own --  as well as Afghani governmental 
organizations. Many served women only, but generally in the contexts of 
family and community. (Lisa's earlier observation that women's issues 
are raised within general contexts of health, etc. seemed true of this 
group.) They were particularly aware of women's issues, especially 
health concerns...and they were all eager and hungry to learn about 
whatever tools and resources for literacy teaching they could get 
during their 3 week stay in the U.S.

(btw - in reference to the previous discussion about attire...these 
women wore very colorful clothing, some wore head coverings, many did 
not, most all wore longer flowing dresses. I believe one woman wore 
slacks. It was clear they were dressing for Western convention and 
travel but still within the conventions of their personal taste and 
choice combined with Muslim convention.)

There were 2 things I found very interesting.
1) The first related to historical context. At some point in our 
discussion, I mentioned the Beijing conference on women -- now 10 years 
ago. I looked into a sea of blank faces and none of these women very 
active and well-informed women had even heard about the conference. 
These women were living under the Taliban at the time and so a very 
significant international event for women around the world totally 
passed by them. I began to think about how women in the U.S. also know 
little about this conference -- for a different set of reasons. It once 
again opens for me that tensions between the functional uses of 
literacy and the socio-political contexts of literacy for women.

2) During the opening introductions of the workshop, I asked each woman 
to introduce herself and her organization and to discuss how women and 
literacy issues intersect and how and what women's issues surface in 
the work they do. A number of issues emerged -- somewhat comparative to 
the issues that surface for women in literacy programs in the US 
(disease & health, economic development, pregnancy & childbirth, family 
support, etc.). But there was one significant difference. Inevitably, 
when this group of questions gets raised in a US context, what bubbles 
to the top with most frequency are the effects of domestic, sexual, and 
community violence on women's access to education and their ability to 
concentrate or stay engaged in learning situations. This was not the 
case among the women in the Afghan group I worked with. In fact, 
violence of any kind was mentioned only once and very much in passing 
-- which I find extremely curious given the continuous state of war in 
Afghanistan and women's lives under Taliban.  I wondered if this was so 
because violence is so "normalized" (as Jenny Horsman might say) to the 
point where it's not discussed or even identified as an issue? or 
simply too painful to discuss??

So, finally, my question to Brenda...in your experience in working with 
women, do they talk about violence? or how do you see it affecting 
their learning? I know you can't speak for these 10 women and I don't 
want to generalize, but can you offer some perspective on this? As I 
say, violence so often surfaces in many conversations and writings 
about women's literacy and it was the absence of these issues in the 
discussion with this particular group of Afghan women that startled me.

thanks for moderating this discussion.
Mev

WE LEARN
Women Expanding: Literacy Education Action Resource Network
www.litwomen.org/welearn.html

Mev Miller, Ed.D., Director
182 Riverside Ave.
Cranston, RI 02910
401-383-4374
welearn at litwomen.org