Hello everyone.   This will be a long post - as I've been away from the discussion list for several days. 

 

n this email I'll try to give some perspectives and thoughts on violence and on violence against women here in Afghanistan.  This is in reply to earlier questions about women's willingness to talk about violence in their lives and about burning issues for women, and in reference to the recent conference here in Kabul on eliminating violence against women.

 

Yesterday over lunch with eight women who are teacher trainers, I had the opportunity to ask a few questions.  We were discussing rural economic development, having just come out a session where they were planning and practicing a workshop for new village literacy teachers on the objectives of LCEP (Literacy and Community Empowerment).  I asked if they thought rural women would say that lack of money is the most important issue for them as women.  Absolutely not, they said.  The biggest issue is women's human rights - the right not to be married off at 11 or 12; the right to not be abused or beaten, the right to education; the right not to have 12 children.

 

This led us into a discussion of the recent local conference on eliminating violence against women, in which one staff person had participated.  The issues are becoming a little different for educated women in Kabul, she said. She said that in addition to the 'usual' ways in which violence is perpetrated against women by men, some women at this conference were talking about the rise in what she called 'psychological' violence that women use against each other.  She gave the example of one very highly placed government official who said that since she has been appointed, women have turned against her, are jealous of her, and are undermining her efforts. 

 

Overall, the conference was focused on establishing some common goals and strategies for raising awareness and educating women and men about violence against women.  There was participation by key Ministries - such those of Women's Affairs, Social and Labor Affairs, Health, Education, Higher Education, Finance, and the Haj - as well as by the Human Rights Commission and international and national NGOs.  While each group committed to developing specific strategies, there were several recommendations - such as using the Women's Affairs centers in each province to hold awareness-raising and strategy workshops at the provincial level; and to establish national regulations for registering engagements (as important as the marriage itself) - to protect very young women.  And - to expand the number (currently only 4 - one in Kabul and 3 in the provinces) of shelters for women.  Some of the documents from the conference will be translated in to English, and if I'm still here when they are made available, I will try to share them.

 

Now - back to individual stories.  I asked a Western friend who speaks good Dari to share her experiences with Afghans (and women in particular) talking about violence in their lives.  Here are some excerpts from what she had to say:

 

"In terms of violence against women, all I can tell you is it happens and most people know and don't question it

 

"I was talking to a group of folks last night and the topic of violence came up.  Killing is violence -  but beating is not considered violence.  Beating is considered part of educating and ensuring good behavior.  Interestingly, about 2 years ago, there was study that showed that beating is conducted by 90% of formal school teachers. 

 

"Once I was privy to an odd conversation. I was in the back seat driving around the roads of Bamiyan and the Hazara driver was speaking with an Easterner who had gone to the West.

"I hear that they don't beat their wives in America".  The returnee said, "It's true-- even some students take their teachers to court if there is any suspicion that the teachers have even touched them."  Said the driver, "That's awful.  People lose their values when they go to the West".

  

My friend also shared a couple of other stories .... 

"There was a woman who was going home in the early evening in Macrorayan (the big area of Soviet-built apartment blocks in Kabul). A taxi was speeding and hit her.  After all the uproar they got the woman out from under the car.  She told the taxi driver 'if only you would have been going faster and killed me, because it is better that I were dead, than go home late and get beating from my husband for being so late.'

 

'Also I was told about a man who killed his wife.  He found she was a "woman" not "a daughter" after they married and so he killed her on the second day of marriage.  He strangled her.  

 

"Once we had a Gender Training for people in our program.   And of the 1 million 3 hundred thousand trainings we have had, this was the most compelling I have ever witnessed. People were so heated and there was so much back and forth.  We started out by addressing stereotypes. We got in groups and each group had to fill in the blank. 

An Afghan man is...

An Afghan woman is 

An Afghan man should be..

An Afghan woman should be

 

"In the Afghan men's group the answers were  'He is .....hospitable ......kind..... faithful......loyal

fights for his country .......fights against colonialism.  This came from the men.

 ... this came from the men.  The women in the group said...He is .....cruel......beats his wife........steps on the rights of women.

 

"And from there the heated debates began.   When we came to the statement  'An Afghan woman should be... ',  the first answer that popped out was...'Veiled!'

 

 

 


________________________________

From: womenliteracy-bounces at dev.nifl.gov on behalf of Ujwala Samant
Sent: Thu 12/1/2005 12:01 AM
To: The Women &amp, Literacy Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WomenLiteracy] More on literacy programs in Afghanistan



Ryan,


>   What do you mean by "but we don't have a similar

> movement for men"?<


Women's movements tend to exclude men.  Western
feminist movements have typically done so and the term
'gender' is used in lieu of or often referring to
women/girls/females. In the Third world, my experience
of feminist movements or movements for social change
was a real eye opener. Women, especially poor women
had no desire to exclude men from their efforts
towards equity. The notion that the sexes are
different is accepted but equal is not. The same women
who taught me about the difference between education
and literacy, explained their perceptions of equity
and equality. What they looked for was equity, or
fairness regardless of their gender. Equality was a
completely different issue to them. In their eyes, no
social change would ever endure unless they included
their men, young and old. Hence they preferred to have
young men as tutors, as social interpreters and with
delicate negotiations (I learned a lot about diplomacy
in my years in the slums) they earned the support of
the older men as well.

In a different example, in the Himalayan foothills, in
one of our projects, I've seen women and men as
healers, as teachers, as parents and a number of them
attend life skills classes to share everything from
childbirth to cooking, farming and market work as well
as administering the village school in between.

Aside from the research I found in the 1990s for my
research, my own observations after living in the US
and France showed me that with so-called liberation
and 'equality', the division of labour between men and
women had not changed. Women just found additional
work and labour attached to their already considerable
(traditional) workload.

The point I am making is that for lasting social
change, men have to be included in any movement.
Whether they need a separate movement for this, I
don't know. But whilst I see some difference in male
roles, I still see a majority of our work roles,
salaries earned, who stays at home being decided in a
traditional manner.

I am not saying there were no valid reasons for a
women's movement to be exclusive. I just found what I
learned when I returned to India for that prolonged
length of time, fascinating, turning all my
theoretical work in the US on it's head. Opened my
eyes to the spectrum of what is power, empowerment,
social change, equity and equality.

Regards,
Ujwala



               
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