Peace Watch

Afghan Women in Government and Society

April 2002

While the world was recently inundated by images of shrouded Afghan women—barred from healthcare, education, and employment—the reality of women in Afghanistan is much more complex, say two experts on Afghanistan.

In the months since the defeat of the Taliban, Afghan women have eagerly emerged from their homes to resume their places in public life—places they held before the Taliban took power as 60 percent of the country's teachers, 40 percent of its students, and even as members of parliament, says Rina Amiri, senior associate for research at the Women and Public Policy Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. "There is more than one reality for women in Afghanistan," she said.

Rina Amiri

Amiri and Zieba Shorish-Shamley, executive director of the Women's Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan, discussed "Afghanistan: Women in Government and Society" at a U.S. Institute of Peace Current Issues Briefing held on January 29. The event, moderated by Joan Winship, adviser for strategic alliances and development at Vital Voices Global Partnership, was part of a series of recent Institute meetings held in conjunction with its Special Initiative on the Muslim World.

In the 1980s, there was a public debate in Afghanistan about the role of Afghan women in society that resulted in urban women taking a more active role in public life, Amiri said. However, each wave of increasing political participation by women and greater education and opportunity was often followed by a backlash in which women would take on more traditional roles, she said. So the Taliban backlash against women's emancipation had a long history, though the Taliban took it much further than before, Amiri said.

Zieba Shorish-Shamley

While most Afghan women before the Taliban takeover did not participate in the formal Afghan economy, they had active roles in their homes as partners to their husbands and exerted some economic control, she said. Further, some 500,000 Afghan widows from the protracted civil war and war with Russia are heads of households, she said. And in the past 20 years, Afghan women living in the diaspora have developed grassroots leaders such as herself and Shorish-Shamley who now advocate for women's rights in Afghanistan, Amiri said.

Still, the pace of progress for women today is likely to be slow, she said. For example, only two Afghan women participated in the Bonn conference in December 2001 and only two belong to the current transitional government in Afghanistan, and they are now "the two most powerful women in Afghanistan," she said. "We would like to see 50 percent participation by women, but you don't have that even in the West."

It is important that Afghan women and not outsiders advocate for women's issues in Afghanistan; otherwise, women's issues might get equated with Western issues, which would simply set Afghan women back further, Amiri cautioned. Given the history of Afghan women's education and participation in public life, progress among women there is inevitable, she concluded.

Joan Winship

Shorish-Shamley pointed out that while Afghanistan is a traditional and religious society, the ruling class and mullahs direct religious beliefs through their control over interpretation of the Koran. Afghan society is largely illiterate, so these elites interpret the Koran for their own benefit, she argued. For example, she noted, in the Koran the rights of men and women are presented as equal in every aspect of life. Indeed, many edicts of the prophet stress education for men and women alike, "so the secret lies in educating people" so that they might interpret the Koran for themselves, Shorish-Shamley said.

Women were leaders from the beginning in Islam, she said. For example, the woman who became the prophet Mohammad's first wife was a merchant and 15 years older than he. He was working for her when she proposed to him, Shorish-Shamley said. And, she added, when the prophet was married to his second wife, he always told followers to go to her to learn his tradition as she was so knowledgeable.

Today it is imperative to push for women's rights in Afghanistan because Afghan women need to participate in the country's reconstruction to ensure a place for them in the future life of the country, Shorish-Shamley said. Activists and policymakers should demand that 50 percent of U.S. aid go to Afghan women, she concluded. "We must get women involved in every aspect of reconstruction from day one."