Beyond (the ABCs): education, community, and feminism in Afghanistan

Abstract

This article examines the meaning, operation, and outcomes of education and related formation of feminist identity development within an Afghan women's humanitarian and political organization. Qualitative data, including 110 interviews, archival review, and participant observations, were collected using a feminist, community, strengths-based approach and were re-analyzed here with a focus on educational processes. Findings revealed multiple educational mechanisms, both similar to and different from many Western assumptions. Within these educational mechanisms, themes of critical consciousness and feminist identity also arose. Outcomes were mapped against Downing and Roush's (1985) feminist identity development model. Similarities, differences, limitations, and lessons in the application of a Western model to an Afghan context are discussed. Findings have implications for understanding indigenous educational methods, the development of critical consciousness and ''feminist'' identity in global perspective, and cross-cultural, feminist, community psychology research and application. C 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. It was not until after September 11, 2001, when the U.S. government's hunt for Osama bin Laden led them to the Taliban and Afghanistan, that many people in the West first learned of Afghan women's struggles for the most basic of human rights. The plight of Afghan women under the Taliban (1995Taliban ( -2001 was indeed desperate: They were denied the right to go to school or work, access health care, and other basic services and restricted in what they wore, who they talked to, and even the circumstances under which they could leave their homes. Yet it is important to note that the modern suffering of Afghan women, and indeed all Afghans, did not begin or end with Taliban rule, but rather can be seen in decades of political strife, social unrest, war, and religious and sociocultural oppression.1 The result is a country that today ranks near the bottom of all countries in a wide range of rankings, including clean water, life expectancy, poverty, gender development, and literacy rates (Brodsky, 2011; United Nations Development Programme, 2010). The political strife and related oppression of Afghan women has impeded their advancement in many realms, arguably the most devastating and wide-reaching of which has been in the area of girl's and women's education.Despite these grave circumstances, Afghan women are not mere victims, but have actively worked, both individually and collectively, to resist oppression and promote opportunities and freedoms for girls, women, and all Afghans. Indeed, the history of activism for Afghan women's advancement, focused particularly on their education, dates well before the current post-Taliban influx of Western governmental and nongovernmental organizations (NGO). In the early 1920s, for example, King Amanullah and Queen Soraya worked to extend women's marital rights, public freedoms, and education and employment opportunities, and founded the first women's press (Emadi, 2002;M...

Participation: Structural and relational power and Maasai women’s political subjectivity in Tanzania

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Women's Community Mobilization and Well‐being: Local Resistance to Gendered Social Inequities in Nicaragua and Tanzania

“…It is well documented that neoliberal processes within globalization–in particular, the economic reforms and structural adjustments of the 1980s and 1990s aimed at privileging foreign investment and multinational corporations over local and state‐owned enterprises–have contributed to rising levels of gender inequality and marginalization (Acosta‐Belén & Bose, ; Naples & Desai, ). However, social actors from diverse local contexts demonstrate that women are not mere victims, but rather work actively to resist oppression and promote women's well‐being worldwide (Brodsky et al., ). In contrast to the large swell of international development organizations that draw on generic notions of “gender mainstreaming,” or deploy one‐size‐fits‐all programs aimed at women's empowerment (e.g., micro‐credit), self‐mobilized groups of women employ a complex understanding of the interaction between local and global initiatives aimed at promoting women's human rights.…”

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Lifetime activism, marginality, and psychology: Narratives of lifelong feminist activists committed to social change.

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