An attack on women, girls

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times. Charles Dickens’s familiar words are ones with which we can all identify. We see the contradictions in our midst, from the ones that affect us directly, and feel discriminatory and unfair, to the ones that feel far from us, disconnected and almost unreal.

This phrase describes girls’ realities today. More than at any other time in history, they are growing into a world in which a global feminist movement of women and men is advocating for their rights, empowerment, equity and access to justice.

On the other, they are experiencing violence and oppression that should be inconceivable in our time, as a backlash to their increasing freedoms and precisely because they are female.

Anyone aware of this would be hugely sceptical of any narrative of women now having too much power over men or men now being the real victims (of women). It takes serious compartmentalising to see that discourse as a true representation of the world in which girls live, a world still too silent about the harms they face.

With this in mind, I want to end this year with a hard look, not at past months, but at the present, which reminds us of how much of our hearts, sense of justice and voice among millions or billions of others are needed as we step into a new year.

With this in mind, I want to put my heart, sense of justice and voice to express outrage and solidarity with the girls and young women of Afghanistan. What else could be more necessary to say this week?

On December 20, women in Afghanistan were banned from universities. Most Afghan teenage girls had already been banned from secondary school. In some places, they were no longer attending primary school.

Since the Taliban took over in August 2021, they also stopped women from working in public sector jobs and as teachers in schools. They banned them from travelling, entering government buildings, seeing a doctor or taking a taxi without a male relative, and ordered them to cover entirely, ideally with a burqa, once outside of their home. In November, women were stopped from going to parks, funfairs, gyms, mosques and public baths.

It’s been an attack on women’s right to an education, to work, to move around independently and to make their own choices. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs was renamed the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which has overwhelmingly targeted women and girls’ dress and behaviour. Islam is the justification, but this is entirely about violent patriarchy.

Afghan women and girls are devastated and angry, and have protested despite the risks of beatings and arrest for defiance against fundamentalist Taliban leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.

They describe broken hopes and destroyed dreams, numbness and endless tears, a nightmare in daylight which they can see with their eyes open, and loss of control over their future.

These are girls and young women with dreams of being becoming doctors, teachers, pilots and scientists; girls and women who may have no male family to chaperone them outside; girls and women who could be beaten for not wearing socks or showing their face in public, and who may now have no sources of income.

They have become prisoners in their own home and in terror outside. Female suicide rates have exponentially increased. Early marriages of Afghan girls have also increased as education is stopped, as girls and women are made dependent on men, as an economic crisis escalates and as parents seek to avoid forced marriages to Taliban members. Imagine a brilliant 12-year-old, once in school, now in the worst of times.

On the streets, women have been chanting, “rights for everyone or no one,” “education for all” and “bread, work and freedom.”

Male university students have walked out of exams and male university lecturers have resigned from their jobs in protest. Though there have been sanctions, there is hardly enough action or impact. There has been global condemnation of what is being called a crime against humanity, but things are likely to become worse before there’s any chance of them becoming better.

In a world with so much possibility, girls and women are being allowed nearly nothing. As we enter a new year, we must set our minds to challenging these kinds of contradictions even if they feel distant from our own reality. Those of us who have much to celebrate, have much responsibility.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 489

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