Afghan Women Rising

Women from the first graduating class of the Afghan National Army Female Officer Candidate School during their graduation ceremony, Sept. 23, 2010. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Laura R. McFarlane)

This post is by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. It is an excerpt of an article originally published in the Fall 2010 Ms. Magazine.  It is reposted at GAB with permission from Ms. Magazine.

Less than a year before President Obama’s stated date for the beginning of military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the blizzard of bad news confronting the country’s women feels endless and unstoppable. Front pages blare headlines about the Taliban’s growing military muscle, while reporters tell of women parliamentary candidates unable to campaign for fear of assassination, and Time magazine shocks us with a cover image of a maimed young woman.

All of these stories are true and must be told. (I myself have written about a number of them over the last several years.) But there is another, far less reported reality worthy of attention: Against a daunting constellation of obstacles and dangers, Afghan women are making progress, often quietly and to little fanfare. Their efforts span a range of fields, from entrepreneurs venturing into business and helping other women do the same, to young women serving in the Afghan Army and police. From midwives saving women’s lives to community leaders fighting to make politicians hear women’s voices. Though their vocations differ, they share a determination to create something better for themselves and the next generation. And they say that whatever the risks, they will not be deterred from what they see as their duty to contribute to their community and their country.

Here are two of their stories. (To read more see the Fall 2010 issue of Ms. Magazine.)

Twenty-nine young women in dark-green uniforms are seated around a half-dozen classroom tables on an Afghan National Army base near Kabul. They study PowerPoint presentations and come frequently to the front of the class to bark back answers to their in- structor’s barrage of questions.

The Afghan Army launched its first officer class for women last spring. The five-month course includes English study and physical training, along with instruction in logistics and finance—the two Army specialties currently open to women.

The young women in the school must live on base, a challenge in this traditional country where women do not usually leave their families except to marry. Yet the officer candidates, all of whom must have completed high school and passed an entrance exam, say that being apart from their families is a small price to pay for being a pioneer.

“My father was an officer in the military and I always wanted to be in the military myself, so when I heard the TV ads I got very excited about it and wanted to join,” says 21-year-old Wahida, one of seven children. “I want women to stand by their brothers and defend their country.”

Nineteen-year-old Mary—a nickname given to her by her women mentors from the U.S. military—agrees. For her, joining the Army is about showing that women are fully capable of serving their nation.

“There are a lot of women who are very educated and smart, but they still get abused by their husbands, so I wanted to be in the military because I wanted as a sister to help and to bring change to this country,” she says. “Step by step we will have more female officers, and as our num- bers increase, change will come.”

Adds Wahida, “For a country to go forward, there should be men and women working together. Otherwise, if it is just men making all the decisions, it’s just like the Taliban.”

For Afghanistan’s midwives, the goal is to help women make educated decisions that will save lives. The country’s midwifery training and accreditation program has become a role model that’s even being- exported to neighboring nations.

Photo credit: USAID Afghanistan

“Right now we have more than 2,600 midwives in Afghanistan trained to national and international stan- dards, compared to 467 with all different levels of training in 2002,” says Pashtoon Azfar, founder of the Afghan Midwives Association (she’s now a midwife advisor in India). “Midwives take on an economic role in their families and are decision makers,” she said. “They play a role as leaders in the community.”

Despite the success of the midwifery program, Afghanistan remains one of the deadliest places on earth to be an expectant mother, with the U.N. estimating that Afghan women face a 1 in 8 risk of death from pregnancy- related causes over their lifetimes. Figures from 2002 (which the Afghan Ministry of Health is now working to update) show that 1,600 women died for every 100,000 live births, making Afghanistan home to the world’s worst maternal mortality rate.

But now, midwives and skilled birth attendants visit homes across the nation—despite security concerns— instructing women in health basics such as nutrition and hand-washing, teaching them how to deliver babies sanitarily and safely and even offering family-planning options. Many women in this largely rural country continue to live in remote regions far removed from modern hospitals; others, particularly in the nation’s south and east, face family restrictions that make leaving the house to visit a clinic or hospital nearly impossible. By fanning out across the provinces to reach women in their living rooms, Afghan midwives have contributed to what health officials hope will be a significant reduction in the nation’s maternal mortality rate.

“Since 2004, there have been a lot of positive changes,” said Feroza Mushtari, the acting president of the Afghan Midwives Association. At 25, she is a veteran of the country’s new training, having graduated from the first class of competency-based midwifery training from the Ghazanfar Institute of Health Science in Kabul in 2004. In Mushtari’s view, midwifery concerns much more than women’s health: It is about changing women’s roles in Afghan society.

“At the beginning we had to sit with the community shuras (councils of elders) and elders and mullahs and really advocate for them to let their sisters, daughters and wives work as midwives in the community,” said Mushtari. “Now when we say we have 20 openings in the midwifery program, we receive 2,000 applications because, number one, they see these women can immediately start serving their families, neighbors and community, and, number two, women have money; they earn a salary and can help their fathers and husbands and families.”

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is deputy director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her first book, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, will be published in March by HarperCollins.

Are you new to Gender Across Borders? Please read this first. We may update the site, and you can stay in contact with us through our Twitter feed and our newsletter. Like Gender Across Borders on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter and Tumblr. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter.