News
Although six years of Taliban rule did much to damage the Afghan school system and diminish local women's rights movements, community-based efforts have made progress towards restoring education and women's rights to the war-torn country, geography professor Jennifer Fluri and gender and development researcher Lina Abirafeh said in a lecture held in Spaulding Auditorium on Wednesday.
In the lecture, titled "Can a Broken System Produce Tomorrow's Leaders and Gender Balance?" Fluri and Abirafeh discussed the intersection of women's rights and education in Islamic culture.
Women's rights as defined in Islam are "a lot better" than the current state of women's rights in Afghanistan, according to Fluri, who also teaches courses in the women and gender studies department.
Since Islam is an integral part of Afghan culture, it can play a positive role in future women's rights movements, she said.
"Islam is such a respected part of everyday life [and] an important vehicle to support women's rights," she said.
Following the invasion of Afghanistan, the United States failed to understand the importance of the community over the individual in Afghan culture, Fluri said.
"Thinking about yourself and thinking about your own personal wants and desires does not really make sense to people in Afghanistan," she said.
The community-oriented culture puts the family at the center of social life and leaves women with a heavy domestic burden, making it difficult for them to pursue opportunities outside the home, according to Fluri.
"We need to think about how to provide education and economic opportunity while considering [a woman's] household burden," Fluri said.
The burqa, for example, has become a far too politicized issue in the west, Abirafeh and Fluri said, leading the burqa to be wrongly viewed by western nations as a "tool of oppression" used in Afghanistan.
"My sense is that Afghan women long for choice the choice to wear a veil, a burqa or nothing at all," Abirafeh said.
Fluri said that the burqa can have a positive practical application for women as it allows them to carry books and school supplies without getting harassed.
Young women carrying books are often the target of Taliban attacks.
