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Afghanistan: Girl Power
People & Power follows the young Afghan women taking the battle for gender
equality onto the streets of Kabul.
People and Power Last Modified: 13 May 2012 13:40
A film by Trevor Bormann, Wayne McAllister and ABC
More than a decade after the Taliban were driven from power in Afghanistan, the
plight of the country's women remains dire, with threats and attacks by
insurgents on women leaders, schoolgirls, and girls' schools, and harassment of
women for "moral crimes" such as running away from forced marriages or domestic
violence.
Despite the best efforts of the international community and some of the more
'enlightened' elements of the current Afghan government, the kind of aggressive
ultra-misogyny that marked the Taliban years (when religious police forced all
women off the streets of Kabul, and ordered people to blacken their windows so
that women would not be visible from the outside) is still evident in parts of
the country.
"I think when you are born a woman in Afghanistan you are taught every
day to hate yourself .... We don’t know how to respect women, neither men nor
women, no one knows it. Women don't respect themselves. This is how everyone is
treated, every woman, any woman who dares to take off her burqa and walk like a
human being is treated like this."
- Noorjahan Akbar, an activist and founder of Young Women for Change
But earlier this year the case of a 15-year-old girl named Sahar Gul was
particularly shocking. There was international outrage when television pictures
of her bruised and battered body being wheeled down a hospital corridor were
shown around the world. She had just been rescued from weeks of imprisonment
and torture at the hands of her husband's family.
Sold to the family to pay off a debt, Sahar Gul had refused to become a
prostitute to bring in more money. Her 'punishment' was to be cut, burned with
cigarettes, beaten to a pulp and have many of her fingernails ripped out. She
was barely alive when police found her.
The tragedy, say campaigners, is that her story may be far from unique, it just
happened to come to light. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished
country, and they still do not enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men.
Indeed their human rights are under constant pressure. Although these are
supposedly enshrined in the Afghan constitution, as recently as 2009 a bill
passed by the Afghan parliament sought to make it illegal for a woman from the
country's Shia community to resist her husband's sexual advances. Another
provision required a husband's permission for a woman to work outside the home
or go to school. And a third proposed to make it illegal for a woman to refuse
to "make herself up" or "dress up" if that is what her husband wanted.
The government later rowed back on some of these provisions, violence against
women was made a criminal offence that same year, and there have since been
improvements in education, maternal mortality, employment, and the role of
women in public life and governance.
But for many Afghan women, especially those who challenge the status quo,
deep-seated prejudice and discrimination are a fact of life. As a report from
the NGO Human Rights Watch in March 2012 made clear: "Women … have suffered
harassment, threats, and sometimes murder. Forced marriage, underage marriage,
and domestic violence are widespread and too widely accepted."
The battle for gender equality
The fear is that with the 2014 departure of NATO troops drawing ever closer,
the plight of Afghan women could actually worsen rather than improve. Whatever
else they may be held responsible for, those forces have tried to use their
leverage to promote and protect women's rights. When they go, any gains made
could be reversed. Also likely to decrease is the foreign aid that pays for
schools and clinics that have changed many lives. Afghan women dread being
abandoned again by the rest of the world, as they were during the Taliban era.
Against this background, it is perhaps not surprising that the case of Sahar
Gul was taken up by those seeking to advance women's rights. But what is
unusual is just how powerful a motivating force her story has been to one of
the more extraordinary and progressive of those campaigners.
"I see now a generation of amazing young women who are so progressive and
smart and determined to make a change and to sustain change within society.
There's this other extreme where I just see that in some ways men are going a
bit backwards."
- Trudi-Ann Tierney, the head of drama at Tolo TV
Like Sahar Gul, Noorjahan Akbar is a teenager who grew especially close to
Sahar Gul in the weeks following her rescue. But as this film from Australian
journalist Trevor Bormann reveals, there is far more to the articulate
19-year-old Noorjahan Akbar than just being a kindly 'big sister' to a
vulnerable younger girl recovering in hospital.
She set up a group called Young Women for Change which has been taking the
battle for gender equality out onto the streets of the capital - eager to
understand why Afghan men are still so uneasy with the notion of women's rights
but determined to change those attitudes by persuasion, debate and example.
She says: "Almost every woman you ask in Afghanistan if she would rather be a
man, she would say yes. I wouldn't, because now I realise that even though I am
a woman in Afghanistan, there are many things I can do."
Can Norah and her group make a difference? Maybe, maybe not, but they will not
give up trying.
There have been some very positive developments since the film was made, at
least as far as Sahar Gul herself is concerned. She has now left hospital and
is completing her recovery at a women's refuge. She has resumed her education
and hopes one day to become a doctor and a women's leader. On May 1, 2012 a
court in Kabul sentenced her father-in-law, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law to
10 years in prison. Her husband and brother-in-law are still being sought by
the police.
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