More than a year ago, the Taliban affirmed their firmness by denying girls access to secondary school and employment. They then banned them from enjoying parks, gymnasiums and hammams. In the past few weeks, they have finally banned women from attending university, primary school and working for NGOs.
In the last months of 2022, the international community has been touched to see Iranian women occupy public space and claim their rightful freedoms. As an Afghan, I was particularly sensitive to the fact that men demonstrated alongside them. This is something that has never been seen in Afghanistan! I then asked myself: “Why are Afghans so reluctant to support the women of their country? »
Socially speaking, public space has been split in two for ages! Yes, I will be told that photos from the 1970s bear witness to a great freedom for the women we see there wearing miniskirts. But it is still about the same thirty images that were taken in the wealthy neighborhoods and on the university campus of Kabul. These photos are the exception that proves the rule! Everywhere, except in the big cities, the Afghan women must be hidden under burkas to move out of the houses.
The spaces of Afghan society are divided for an apparently simple reason: to protect the fairer sex.
As women are concealed and inaccessible, men see their desire exacerbated to the point that they do not know how to stand respectfully near them. To resolve these situations, women are removed from public space without men having to take responsibility for their desires and actions. It’s been like that for centuries!
In the 1920s, King Amanullah Khan tried to educate the country by creating schools for girls and proposing to ban the burqa, but he was quickly ousted by the rigorous clerics of the time! The problem is old!
The impacts of the ban on women studying and working are numerous and affect the whole people. Here are a few :
- Generalized mental health problems;
- Increase in physical and psychological violence against women and girls;
- Women who are the sole breadwinner end up in extreme poverty;
- A woman cannot sign a lease herself. Without a male guardian, she finds herself on the streets without government assistance;
- Parents sometimes face the harrowing choice of having to sell their child into slavery to ensure they are fed;
- The age of arranged marriages drops even further, parents give up their daughters to make ends meet;
- Women are lowered to the rank of captive servants.
During the recent demonstrations by women around the ban on studying and working, the men not only did not support them, but in addition, they called them whores, sluts, saying that they were trampling on honor of their families and that of Islam; that they had better go home and take care of the household chores. Some men fear being severely punished, even tortured and imprisoned if they stand up for the protesters.
If we want things to change in Afghanistan, it will take time and above all, education for all.
* Co-author of the book Afghan and Muslim, Quebec conquered me (Three-Pistoles editions)