Malala has lived up to her name. Words cannot describe her fearlessness and her sense of responsibility, that too at such a young age. The world is in awe of her, and rightly so. Her courage and her family’s love and support must have been at the core of her getting a new life, a life more precious than any cause. Malala attempted at exercising leadership, only at 15. But she has her entire life before her and ample opportunities for the practice of leadership; she must live, and so should others like her.
Now that she has recovered, the world has celebrated Nov 10 as Malala Day, and three million Pakistani families will receive stipends for sending their kids to school, let us reflect on why this might have happened. This reflection is on our assumptions of where our society is at, on this issue and beyond. This is not about the person of Malala. This is about the role she played, a role that she’d inspire many to play, in Pakistan and abroad.
The space for women’s participation, outside/ in addition to their conventional role is limited in the region that includes Pakistan and Afghanistan. But this limitation has been challenged in a number of ways. Dressing girls as boys, i.e. women’s effort at getting exposure in society in the role of men, to me, is one such creative attempt at women’s participation. In the Afghan context, one could quote many examples: from Bibi Hakmeena in Khost Province, who dresses like a man and is considered to be “as man as any man” to Kaftar Bibi in Baghlan Province, from Azita Rafat the Afghan Member of Parliament, to her daughter Mehrnoosh/ Mehran, all are instances of women’s attempt at participation in society, in a creative way. Osama the Movie depicted a similar situation, though limited to the context of the Taliban rule, and without in-depth analysis of cultural roots of this challenge. For the world unfamiliar with Afghanistan’s cultural complexities, this depiction helped strengthen a pattern of well-intended interventions that relied on utter ignorance of age-old cultural roots of women’s suppression and the questionable assumption of Taliban’s key role in perpetuating the pattern of women suppression.
The above, while on one hand, are indications of a serious limitation, as well as creative attempts at participation in some form, on the other, can also be seen as instances of work avoidance in the face of real work: genuine women participation. Our society, at large, is denying this reality. These attempts are examples of technical fixes that avoid the real work of facing this reality and working towards changing it.
The other side of the coin of women participation is their participation in women’s role. Meena, the leader of RAWA was assassinated, and its members were prosecuted, arrested and tortured because as individuals, and as a group, they represented women’s participation in politics in the role of women and outside of the conventional role accepted and recognized by the society.
Malala represents the same role, or at least the facilitation of women’s genuine participation in the future. Malala, through the values that she embodied and the struggle that she waged, in defense of education, perturbed the status quo of women’s conventional role. Society’s response to this disequilibrium was to attack her in person. It is important to remember that what caused the attack was not Malala as a 15 years old girl, but the leadership role that she played, the values that her role embodied and the threat that the combination of the role and the values posed to the equilibrium of society.
Many play this leadership role. Many face the danger. Many may fail at staying alive, and still exercising leadership. What adds to the danger is working through a misdiagnosed situation and ill informed women empowerment strategies, based on inaccurate assumptions. Hundreds of cases of attacks on girl schools, poisoned students and acid attacks in Afghanistan are being reported, where a majority is said to come from armed groups that oppose girl’s education.
Is the world we live in ready for women’s participation in their own role? Or could it be that the issue of women’s rights and their social, political and economic participation is not yet ripe enough? For the periphery of the Afghan population, and probably Pakistan as well, women’s issue may not be on the agenda, let alone being a priority. The reported cases of violence against women in Afghanistan, from Maah Gul to Sahar Gul, from Nasira to Gulsom, all are indications of this reality. For the urban educated class, it seems to be on the agenda. But that is just it. It is unfortunately not important enough. This, one could claim on the basis of the limited participation rate of urban men and women at protest rallies and set-ins held in major cities in response to domestic violence against women. Despite a huge network of women organizations, claiming to have more than 5000 members all across the country, not more than 100 show up at a protest rally. What is underneath this silence is a difficult question to be answered by one person alone, but what seems apparent is the location of women’s rights issue: on the list of negotiable items for a majority of the population. Peace in Afghanistan might come with women’s reduced participation, or so it seems at this point.
We assume, perhaps wrongly, that the issue of women’s rights matters to the majority of the Afghan and Pakistani population. We must question this assumption before it is too late. All of the above examples suggest that this issue does not matter as much as we’d like it to. By ignoring this reality and excessively depending on a foreign narrative of women’s emancipation, women’s movement in this region mirrors the conditions it was initially established to address. Women organizations target women’s dependence on men and work towards their independence. Yet, they mirror the same dependence, not on men so much, but on the international women movements, mostly western. The patterns of dependence remains to be at play, with a change in its source only, from men (sources of authority in our society) to western women movements (sources of authority on the issue of women emancipation.)
If one of the indicators of focused, consistent and persistent struggle is to burn all return ships, then we haven't really burned any. This does not mean that we are not ready to die for this cause. We shouldn’t want to die for any cause. But this does mean that we are applying short-term fixes and not looking at collective ways of inventing long-term solutions.
So what if we don’t question our assumptions?
We base our interpretation of possible way-forward strategies on this assumption. Since we assume that the issue matters to the population, our strategies are focused on making what matters, work. Given that the reality gives a different picture, our strategies should be oriented towards ripening the issue of women’s rights, being patient with results, being modest with expectations, of our own and of those we raise through our campaigns, speeches, and write ups, pacing the work, so that Malalas are not targeted again, managing conflict and keeping the level of conflict within the productive range, and one which the people can take, and taking the population that we want to save from itself along, instead of leaving them behind. This understanding is of particular importance for activists like Malala and those who support her, take inspiration from her and advocate for her style of leadership.
The main work belongs to us, to the people of this region. But the international community needs to question some assumptions as well. 9/11 and the consequent US intervention introduced to some and reinforced for the rest, a misconceived perception: that women’s issues in Afghanistan is the result of Taliban’s or the preceding years (1992-1996) of Jehadi rule. Laura Bush’s radio speech of November 17, 2001, calling for an intervention to emancipate women, marked the initial event, a whirlwind we are still caught in.
Women’s limited participation has roots in our cultural values, and will not change with a limited political and military intervention, especially when it is devoid of social engagement with the society at large.
And society at large, in the context of our region, includes men, while women empowerment strategies and programs of the past 10 years isolated men more than it facilitated women’s active engagement. Like it or not, for the majority of the Afghan population, men are the doors to women’s life and their primary source of social and economic dependence. To assume that women’s conditions of living could be altered, or shaped, without genuine participation of men, is misplaced. Yet we assumed this, and continue to hold onto this assumption. This approach has not only alienated men in rural areas, but also in urban areas; women’s success or achievement, is being seen, more as a result of them being women, than them actually being capable of achieving it. Increasing symbolic representation of women, and men’s expectation of symbolic representation of women are indications of this pattern.
So what lies ahead?
It is time we stop looking at women empowerment through an isolated frame that is exclusive to women only. Women empowerment and genuine participation is not possible without society’s collective understanding and effort. And this involves men. Men do not represent an impediment to women’s progress. They represent an opportunity for collective action, if engaged.
Not that we have a census, but rough estimates paint the demographic picture of Afghanistan as a very young nation, with 70% below the age of 25, and 50% below the age of 15. And this group is found, mostly at schools, colleges and universities. This may mean that the best way to reach them, as means to invest in better tomorrow for women and men, is to work on the curriculum, teaching method and environment that shapes these minds at the early age.
In addition to women, African-American and Latin electorate, analysts gave the credit of President Obama’s victory to youth. If held in a free and fair environment, youth hold the key to success in the upcoming Afghan Presidential Elections of 2014, men and women both.
Initially developed for and presented at the Leadership class at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Oct 31, 2012.
Initially developed for and presented at the Leadership class at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Oct 31, 2012.