Women In Afghanistan 2

Women In Afghanistan

(Women In Kabul in 2006)

Further information: Murder of Farkhunda Malikzada Many women in Afghanistan experience at least one form of abuse. In 2015, the World Health Organization reported that 90% of women in Afghanistan had experienced at least one form of domestic violence. Violence against women is widely tolerated by the community, and it is widely practiced in Afghanistan. Violence against women in Afghanistan ranges from verbal abuse and psychological abuse to physical abuse and unlawful killing. From infancy, girls and women are under the authority of their fathers or husbands. Their freedom of movement is restricted since they are children and their choice of husbands is also restricted. Women and girls are deprived of education and denied economic liberty. In their pre-marriage and post-marriage relationships, their ability to assert their economic and social independence is limited by their families. Most married Afghan females are faced with the stark reality that they are forced to endure abuse.  If they try to extricate themselves from the situation of abuse, they invariably face social stigma, social isolation, persecution for leaving their homes by the authorities and honor killings by their relatives.

Customs and traditions which are influenced by centuries-old patriarchal rules prevail, the issue of violence against women becomes pronounced. The high illiteracy rate among the population further perpetuates the problem. A number of women across Afghanistan believe that it is acceptable for their husbands to abuse them. Reversing this general acceptance of abuse was one of the main reasons behind the creation of the EVAW. In 2009, the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) was signed into law. The EVAW was created by multiple organizations which were assisted by prominent women's rights activists in Kabul (namely UNIFEM, Rights & Democracy, Afghan Women's Network, the Women's Commission in the Parliament and the Afghan Ministry of Women's Affairs. In March 2015, Farkhunda Malikzada, a 27-year-old Afghan woman was publicly beaten and slain by an angry mob of radical Muslims in Kabul on a false accusation of Quran desecration. A number of prominent public officials turned to Facebook immediately after the death to endorse the lynching.[91] It was later revealed that she did not burn the Quran. In 2018, Amnesty International reported that violence against women was perpetrated by both state and non-state actors. In April 2020, HRW reported that in Afghanistan, women with disabilities face all forms of discrimination and sexual harassment while they are accessing government assistance, health care and schools. The report also detailed everyday barriers which women and girls face in one of the world’s poorest countries. On August 14, 2020, Fawzia Koofi, a member of Afghanistan’s peace negotiating team, was wounded in an assassination attempt near the capital, Kabul, while she was returning from a visit to the northern province of Parwan. Fawzia Koofi is a part of a 21-member team which is charged with representing the Afghan government in upcoming peace talks with the Taliban. A 33-year-old Afghan woman was attacked by three people while she was on her way from work to her home. She was shot and stabbed in her eyes with a knife. The woman survived the attack, but she lost her eyesight. Taliban denied allegations and said that the attack was carried out on her father’s order, as he vehemently opposed her working outside of home.

Honor killings In 2012, Afghanistan recorded 240 cases in which women were the victims of honor killings. Of the reported honor killings, 21% of them were committed by the victims' husbands, 7% of them were committed by their brothers, 4% of them were committed by their fathers, and the rest of them were committed by other relatives of the victims. In May 2017, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan concluded that the vast majority of the perpetrators of honor killings were not punished. On 12 July 2021, a woman in Faryab Province was beaten to death by Taliban militants and her house was set alight. In Balkh Province in August 2021, Taliban militants killed an Afghan woman because she was wearing tight clothing and because she was not being accompanied by a male relative.

Politics and workforce

(U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton standing with Afghan female politicians, which includes Sima Samar to her left, Fauzia Koofi (with the green headscarf) to her right, and Selay Ghaffar to her farthest right)

A large number of Afghan women serve as members of parliament. Some of these included Shukria Barakzai, Fauzia Gailani, Nilofar Ibrahimi, Fauzia Koofi, and Malalai Joya. Several women also took positions as ministers, including Suhaila Seddiqi, Sima Samar, Husn Banu Ghazanfar, and Suraya Dalil. Habiba Sarabi became the first female governor in Afghanistan. She also served as Minister of Women's Affairs. Azra Jafari became the first female mayor of Nili, the capital of Daykundi Province. As of December 2018, Roya Rahmani is the first-ever female Afghan ambassador to the United States. In September 2020, Afghanistan has secured a seat on the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women for the first time, an achievement that is seen as a “sign of progress for a country once notorious for the oppression of women”.

(Female officers of the Afghan National Police)

The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), which includes the Afghan National Police, have a growing number of female officers. One of the Afghan National Army Brigadier generals is Khatol Mohammadzai. In 2012, Niloofar Rahmani became the first female pilot in the Afghan Air Force pilot training program to fly solo in a fixed-wing aircraft,[103] following the footsteps of Colonel Latifa Nabizada, the first Afghan female pilot ever to fly a military helicopter. Other notable Afghan women include Naghma, Aryana Sayeed, Seeta Qasemi, Yalda Hakim, Roya Mahboob, Aziza Siddiqui, Mary Akrami, Suraya Pakzad, Wazhma Frogh, Shukria Asil, Shafiqa Quraishi, Maria Bashir, Maryam Durani, Malalai Bahaduri, and Nasrin Oryakhil. The most popular traditional work for women in Afghanistan is tailoring, and a large percentage of the population are professional tailors working from home. Since the fall of the Taliban, women have returned to work in Afghanistan. Some became entrepreneurs by starting businesses. For example, Meena Rahmani became the first woman in Afghanistan to open a bowling center in Kabul. others are employed by companies and small businesses. Some engaged in singing, acting, and news broadcasting.  In 2015, 17-year-old Negin Khpolwak became Afghanistan's first female music conductor.

In 2014, women made up 16.1% of the labor force in Afghanistan.  Because the nation has a struggling economy overwhelmed with massive unemployment, women often cannot find work where they receive sufficient pay. One area of the economy where women do play a significant role is in agriculture. Of the number of Afghans employed in the agriculture field or similar occupations, about 30 percent of them are women.In some areas in Afghanistan, women may spend as much time working on the land as men do, but still often earn three times less than men in wages. In terms of percentage, women rank high in the fields of medicine and media, and are slowly working their way into the field of justice. Because women are still highly encouraged to consult a female physician when they go to the hospital, nearly fifty percent of all Afghans in the medical profession are women. The number of women having professions in the media is also rising. It was reported in 2008 that nearly a dozen of television stations had all-female anchors as well as female producers.As women are given more opportunities in education and the workforce, more of them are turning towards careers in medicine, media, and justice.

However, even the women that are given the opportunity to have careers have to struggle to balance their home life with their work life, as household tasks are seen as primarily female duties. Since the Afghan economy is weak, very few women can afford to hire domestic helpers, so they are forced to take care of all the household work primarily on their own.Those who choose to work must labour twice as hard because they are essentially holding two jobs. Airlines have welcomed Afghan women in various roles. The national airline, Ariana Afghan Airlines, said that 30 percent of its workforce were women as of 2020. Private airline Kam Air also had over a hundred women in employment. In February 2021, Kam Air operated the first flight with an all-female crew, including an Afghan pilot, in a domestic flight from Kabul to Herat.

Education

(A biology class at Kabul University during the late 1950s or early 1960s.)

Education in Afghanistan has gradually improved in the last decade but much more has to be done to bring it to the international standard. The literacy rate for females is merely 24.2%. There are around 9 million students in the country. Of this, about 60% are males and 40% females. Over 174,000 students are enrolled in different universities around the country. About 21% of these are females.

In the early twentieth century, education for women was extremely rare due to the lack of schools for girls. Occasionally girls were able to receive an education on the primary level but they never moved past the secondary level. During Zahir Shah's reign (1933–1973) education for women became a priority and young girls began being sent to schools. At these schools, girls were taught discipline, new technologies, ideas, and socialization in society. Kabul University was opened to girls in 1947 and by 1973 there were an estimated 150,000 girls in schools across Afghanistan. Unfortunately, marriage at a young age added to the high drop out rate but more and more girls were entering professions that were once viewed as only being for men. Women were being given new opportunities to earn better lives for both themselves and their families. However, after the civil war and the takeover by the Taliban, women were stripped of these opportunities and sent back to lives where they were to stay at home and be controlled by their husbands and fathers.

 During the Taliban regime, many women who had previously been teachers began secretly giving an education to young girls (as well as some boys) in their neighborhoods, teaching from ten to sixty children at a time.  The homes of these women became community homes for students, and were entirely financed and managed by women. News about these secret schools spread through word of mouth from woman to woman. Each day young girls would hide all their school supplies, such as books, notebooks and pencils, underneath their burqas to go to school. At these schools, young females were taught basic literary skills, numeracy skills, and various other subjects such as biology, chemistry, English, Quranic Studies, cooking, sewing, and knitting. Many women involved in teaching were caught by the Taliban and persecuted, jailed, and tortured. The Taliban are still opposed to education for Afghan boys and girls. They are burning down schools, killing students and teachers by all kinds of means, including chemical warfare. For example, in June 2012, fifteen suspects were detained by Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) "in connection with the serial anti-school attacks in northern Afghanistan." The NDS believes that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence was behind the idea. During the same period, Pakistan has been refusing to deliver Afghan bound school text books.

In 2015, the Kabul University began the first master's degree course in gender and women's studies in Afghanistan. Afghan women obtain education in Kazakhstan within the Kazakh-Afghan state educational programme sponsored by the Republic of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan attaches great importance to empowering women and strengthening stability in Afghanistan. In September 2018, Kazakhstan reached an agreement with the European Union that the EU would contribute two million euros to train and educate Afghan women in Kazakhstan.In October 2019, Kazakhstan, the EU and the UNDP launched an education programme to train and educate several dozen Afghan women in Kazakh universities over the next five years. As of 2019, almost 900 graduates of Kazakhstan’s programme serve in top positions in the Afghan president’s office, government ministries, the border guards and police, while others work as respected doctors, engineers and journalists.

Sports

(Women at a cycling rally in Kabul, 2018)

In the last decade, Afghan women have participated in futsal, football, basketball, skiing and various other sports. In 2015, Afghanistan held its first marathon; among those who ran the entire marathon was one woman, Zainab, age 25, who thus became the first Afghan woman to run in a marathon within her own country. In 2004, three years after the fall of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan sent women athletes to the Olympics for the first time. Since then, only four women have competed in the Olympics under the Afghan flag.

Marriage and parenting Marriages in Afghanistan are usually in accordance with Islam and the culture of Afghanistan. The legal age for marriage in Afghanistan is 16. Afghans marry each other based on religious sect, ethnicity, and tribal association. It is rare to see a marriage between a Sunni Pashtun and a Shia Hazara. The nation is a patriarchal society where it is commonly believed that elder men are entitled to make decisions for their families. A man can divorce his wife without the need for her agreement, whereas the opposite is not the case. The country has a high total fertility rate, at 5.33 children born/woman as of 2015. Contraception use is low: 21.2% of women, as of 2010/11.

Arranged marriages and forced marriages are reported in Afghanistan. After a marriage is arranged, the two families sign a contract which both parties are socially and culturally obligated to honor. Among low-income families, it is common for the groom to pay a bride price to the bride's family. The price is only negotiated among the parents. The bride price is viewed as compensation for the money that the bride's family has had to spend on her care and upbringing. In almost 50% of cases, the bride is younger than 18 and in 15% of marriages, the bride is younger than 15. Sometimes women resort to suicide to escape these marriages. In certain areas, females are sometimes bartered in a method of dispute resolution which is called a baad. Proponents of baad claim that it helps prevent enmity and violence between families, although the females themselves are sometimes subjected to a considerable amount of violence both before and after their marriages into families through baad. The practice of baad is technically illegal in Afghanistan. Under the Afghan law, "if a woman seeks a divorce then she has to have the approval of her husband and needs witnesses who can testify in court that the divorce is justified." The first occurrence in which a woman divorced a man in Afghanistan was the divorce which was initiated by Rora Asim Khan, who divorced her husband in 1927. This event was considered unique at the time when it occurred, but it was an exception, because Rora Asim Khan was a foreign citizen, who obtained her divorce with the assistance of the German embassy.

While it is legal for male citizens to marry foreign non-Muslims, it is illegal for female citizens to do so, and Afghan law considers all Afghan citizens Muslims. Up until September 17, 2020, Afghan law dictated that only the father's name should be recorded on ID cards. President Ashraf Ghani signed into law an amendment which was long sought by women's rights campaigners since a campaign which garnered high-profile support from celebrities and members of parliament was launched three years ago under the hashtag #WhereIsMyName.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Afghanistan