What happens to a society when half its members become obsolete, with no public role and no visible identity? What is the upshot to the rest of the society when that occurs: the offspring, the family fabric, and the society at large? What does the future look like then? This is the story of the obliterated women of the Afghan society.
Life for Afghan women in the 60s and 70s was a far cry from their lives today. They were protected under the law, were able to vote, enjoyed equality, and formed a considerable percentage of the workforce. Female judges, prosecutors, and lawyers were active members of the Afghan judicial system. According to Medica Mondiale, a site that supports women and girls in crisis zones, “With the help of a quota regulation, before the Taliban regime took power, women formed 27 per cent of the Members of Parliament in Afghanistan. Across the country, 21 per cent of all defence counsel were women and 265 judges were female out of a total of 1951.”
Polygamy was not allowed, and marriage age was raised from 18 to 21. A significant number of Afghan women were nurses, doctors, and educators, and many were employed by universities, private corporations, and airline companies. Others chose to be poets and artists.
Photos of Afghan women then depicted a liberal form of dress code. Though traditional clothes were common, some women opted for miniskirts and Western outfits.
However, Afghanistan has had a tumultuous history for more than four decades, with Afghan women bearing the brunt of the calamities their country faced. They suffered the most becoming underprivileged and disadvantaged.
To bolster a newly established communist regime and suppress the Mujahideen rebellion, the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 1979. The Mujahideen, who later mutated to become Al Qaeda and the Taliban, were not very powerful, but the US and other countries supplied them with large quantities of weapons via Pakistan to overthrow the Russians. The Russians were indeed overthrown and withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, but the Mujahideen held on.
Civil war raged after the withdrawal, but by 1996, the Mujahideen aka the Taliban were in full power. This was when curtailment of women began. Slowly but surely Afghan women were stripped of their identities and fundamental human rights only to be erased from society visibly and actively.
The US invasion of Afghan provided a respite and some hope for women and girls, but, after 20 years, the US Armed Forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021. The Taliban returned with their Draconian rules as they took over the country once more, and they rebounded on any promises they had made and have resorted to their original ways. A gruesome picture emerged where Afghan women lost their identities yet again.
Afghanistan under the Taliban rule have had one of the worst human rights records in the world with the war against women particularly appalling. Under the auspices of the infamous Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of vice, women were stripped of all their human rights.
According to the Taliban, women must not be educated; with that oppressive rule, the chances of women leading normal lives disappeared. They wear the chador that covers them from head to toes, and they cannot go to work or travel freely without a male guardian. In fact, they are imprisoned in their homes and are denied access to basic health, education, and mobility. They are excluded from public life and face a high risk of being exploited, abused, or married off early.
An NBC report on the status of women in Afghan speaks of an asylum seeker to the US who stopped going to school in 2007 when she was an 11-year-old child. “A group of men, they came to our door and threatened my father, that if you continue to go into school, they will throw acid on our face or kidnap,” she recalled. She spent years confined to her home doing domestic chores. “Over the years, I left home only a couple of times a year.”
Bearing in mind that investing in women’s education fosters a more balanced and flourishing society, what becomes of a society whose half of its members are idle? What becomes of a society whose women remain marginalized?
The words of Hafez Ibrahim, the Egyptian poet, come to mind: The Mother is a school; if you prepare it well, you will prepare a people with solid foundation. And Malcolm X confirms this: If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a nation.
The first loser is the family, primarily the children. An educated woman prioritizes education for her children, makes better health and social choices for them, and provides sound guidance and counselling. When a mother is unable to provide these necessities, the result is a society that lacks fundamental basics.
Not only the family but the society at large suffers. It is reduced to a patriarchal one with men becoming the decision makers even in women’s choices and rights. Disempowered, women also face violence, sexual assault, and abuse, and they are unable to make decisions about their sexual and reproductive health or the rights of their children.
Many women in Afghanistan are secretly trying to educate themselves and educate other women and girls, but the majority fall victim to the oppressive rules the Taliban set. A minority may try to study but, unfortunately, they can’t sit exams.
The whole society will ultimately disintegrate if Afghan women aren’t allowed some freedom to education.
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