19 When the Picture Does Not Fit the Frame: Engaging Afghan Men in Women's Empowerment

In no area of international development is the gap between stated intentions and operational reality as wide as it is in the promotion of equality between men and women.

—Kirsten Lewis and Nadia Hijab¹

Throughout Afghanistan's history, reforms aimed at improving the status of Afghan women have caused political tensions and backlash. In the 1920s, King Amanullah's efforts to advance women's standing in the family and society sparked opposition by traditional forces and led to his abdication of the throne. The reforms initiated by the pro-Soviet regimes of the 1980s ignited violent opposition. As in the past, claims were made that the reforms were un-Islamic, corrupting Afghan women, and incongruent with Afghan culture. Undoing these reforms and “au-thenticizing” Afghan women served as the ideological claims of the Mujahedin and the Taliban.

In contrast, an ideology of “saving” and liberating Afghan women provided one justification for the United States-led invasion in 2001. This ideology effectively characterized Afghan men as oppressors, treating them as a homogeneous group, decontextualizing their resistance to women's advancement, and ultimately reflecting on the design and implementation of gender policies in Afghanistan.

With the fall of the Taliban, governmental and non-governmental organizations, along with international donors, once again embarked upon improving the status of Afghan women. Following the Bonn agreement,² the Ministry of Women's Affairs was established in 2002 and charged with advancing Afghan women's causes. The ministry has been made responsible for policy development, but its weak position within President Hamid Karzai's cabinet and the Afghan parliament has undermined its capacity and authority.

Pressured by international donors, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Karazai and MOWA took up “gender mainstreaming” as the main strategy for improving Afghan women's socioeconomic and political status. Yet in adopting the policy, they have not drawn on historical lessons about women and development in Afghanistan.³ Nor have they, in their decision-making processes, included Afghan women's organizations and other civil societies, whose input could have impacted the choice of policy approach.

Gender mainstreaming has been adopted and implemented throughout the world. I would argue, however, that it is not the best policy approach for Afghanistan.

Over the past five decades much has been done to raise awareness about women's unequal status worldwide. Driven by women's advocates and supported by some national governments and international donors, many policy approaches have been developed to improve the lives of women. The “Women in Development” policy approach of the 1970s mainly focused on women's productive role and their integration in economic development. Although this approach to some extent improved the material conditions of women, it did not have much impact on changing their subordinate status. Addressing the shortcomings of WID, in the 1980s, gender analysts presented a new approach, “Gender and Development,” which focused on gender relations, examining unequal power between men and women and the ideologies and institutions that sustain women's subordinate position.⁴

Gender refers to both men and women and their “comparative or differentiated roles, responsibilities, and opportunities” in a given society.⁵ Gender is socially and culturally constructed and continues to change according to societal changes. Gender, rather than women, has become the core concept in policy approaches.

“Gender mainstreaming,” articulated and advanced by gender analysts, academics, and practitioners, evolves out of the previous policy approaches. In recognition of the fact that women and men have been differently affected by public policies and often women have been marginalized, gender mainstreaming advocates that all policies be analyzed for their gender impact. It is an organizational strategy that seeks to ensure that women's and men's “concerns and experiences are integrated to the design, implementation, and evaluation of all legislations, policies and programmes so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated.”⁶

To reveal the existing gender inequalities, gender mainstreaming draws on sex disaggregated quantitative data on inequalities between men and women in terms of access to education, health care, financial credit, political office, and the like and supports policies and legislations that would address these inequalities. In so doing, gender mainstreaming relies on gender specialists operating in institutions and organizations to evaluate each policy and legislation for its impact on men and women, monitor implementation of gender mainstreaming, and promote gender equality as an achievable goal.

In 1995, at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, women's advocates and representatives of various countries endorsed gender mainstreaming as an internationally agreed-upon strategy to promote gender equality.⁷ It has been adopted and implemented in developed and developing countries and has had varying degrees of success based on cultural and structural constraints.⁸ Nevertheless, no country has yet fully implemented gender mainstreaming.

Gender mainstreaming is a sophisticated and complicated model. Although praised for its goal of gender equality and transformative change, it has been criticized for its lack of conceptual clarity. To begin with, there is a lack of understanding of the meaning and concept of gender. Olena Hankivsky points out the limitation of gender as the male-female dichotomy, questions prioritization of gender as the “axis of discrimination,” and thus regards gender mainstreaming that rests on this concept as “inherently limited.”⁹ Gender mainstreaming does not address the other forms of discrimination and the interfaces between gender, social class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality that have significant bearings on women's life choices, a serious shortcoming for a development model. Mary Daly considers gender mainstreaming an “underdeveloped” concept that demands rethinking,¹⁰ whereas Suzette Mitchell notes that “mainstreaming” of gender does not have identifiable and measurable criteria for success and is difficult to monitor.¹¹

Furthermore, not enough attention is being paid to gendered aspects of the mainstream. While the mainstream refers to the “prevailing thinking of the majority of people, men and women,”¹² due to the historical dominance of men, the existing mainstream reflects only men's interests. Thus implementation of gender mainstreaming requires orchestrated efforts to transform the mainstream and create a favorable environment that would facilitate and support gender equality.

After more than a decade of promoting gender mainstreaming by governments and international agencies, its shortcomings are well documented and its universal application questioned. According to Mitchell, executive director of the International Women's Development Agency: “At the IWDA Gender and Development Dialogue, held in Brisbane, July 2003, stakeholders from academia, development NGOs, United Nations (UN) agencies, women's organizations, consulting firms, bilaterals and gender specialists unanimously agreed that gender mainstreaming—as a term and strategy—is problematic.”¹³

Some gender analysts even believe gender mainstreaming as a strategy “has largely failed.”¹⁴ A host of reasons have been cited for this failure including conceptual confusion, unreliable sex disaggregated data, limited resources, lack of political will, and problems of monitoring and accountability. These and other reasons pose tremendous challenges to gender mainstreaming in Afghanistan.

The existing socioeconomic and political realities of Afghanistan indicate that gender mainstreaming faces many obstacles and therefore is unlikely to achieve its objectives in the near future. A number of factors impede its success.

To begin with, “gender” is a foreign word and there is no equivalent term in Dari or Pashto. The closest translation, jensiyat, refers to sex and not gender. Some gender specialists have even tried to create a new word, jensiyat ejtemai, or “social gender,” but this lacks cultural and linguistic connections. Thus many Afghans regard gender as a foreign import and Western imposition.

Research by specialists in Afghanistan indicates that there is confusion about the meaning of gender at every level of its usage.¹⁵ Most use gender to refer to “women”; others use it to refer to “equality.” Although Afghans generally do not fully understand the term “gender,” some exploit it knowing it pleases international donors, who are more likely to finance or sponsor gender-focused projects.

Gender mainstreaming requires a stable and strong central government. It needs effective state machinery to support women's advancement. This is not the case in Afghanistan. Although Afghanistan's ministries have agreed in theory with gender mainstreaming, in practice few have demonstrated any serious commitment to it. Part of the problem is again limited understanding of the concept of gender, as well as the monitoring and evaluation process, compounded by the lack of budget and expertise. Gender mainstreaming requires significant budget to collect sex disaggregated data and to train gender specialists needed for monitoring and evaluation of policies.

Furthermore, the lack of political will at all levels of the Karzai administration has impacted negatively on the implementation of gender mainstreaming. Most ministers are political appointees, chosen based on nepotism and tribal and political alliances rather than on capability or experience in modern governance. They have competing agendas, pursue different interests, and have limited degrees of commitment to women's issues.

An important component for promoting gender equality and building gender issues into social policies is the active presence of women's groups to exert pressure on the state and sustain the longevity of gender policies. But Afghan women's groups find it difficult to be effective, thanks to the Karzai administration's lack of commitment to women's causes and opposition from Karzai's cabinet members, who have prevented integration of gender issues into social policies and undermined allocation of budget at local and national levels.

The “war on terrorism” has also undermined the prospect of gender mainstreaming. Political alliances made in the name of national security have restored power to warlords and forces opposed to women's rights, eclipsing many gender programs. Political tensions and insecurity have further complicated women's public presence and in turn limited their involvement in women's groups and organizations.

Economic development and political stability also affect the success of gender mainstreaming. Three decades of war, destruction, and internal displacement have destroyed Afghanistan's infrastructure. Its economy is supported by foreign aid and its fragile political system secured by foreign forces. The rate of poverty is high at 36 percent.¹⁶ Any policy that addresses women's equality will have limited impact if it does not also address the dire economic status of Afghan men.

Addressing these constraints to gender mainstreaming, if at all possible, would take much time and significant resources. What's more, whereas gender mainstreaming in theory does not preclude implementation of other policy approaches, in practice its adoption as the “main” strategy effectively diverts resources away from other approaches. Thus, instead of prioritizing gender mainstreaming as the main strategy for gender equality in Afghanistan, it is better to use multiple strategies and policy approaches. Using the empowerment approach and addressing women's needs through grassroots projects can serve them better and provide more immediate results.

Women's empowerment as a framework for development projects emerged in the 1980s. Activists and feminists in developing countries were discontent with top-down economic, deterministic development models of the 1970s and thus compelled to advance a grassroots approach that would be more relevant to the realities of women's lives and the complexities of their struggles.

“Empowerment” entails addressing both the personal and social dimensions of power and how they manifest in society. Unfortunately, overuse of the term and its one-dimensional presentation as an individual's “state of mind” or “sense of financial gain” by economic deter-minists or marketing outlets have stripped it of its original meaning, which relates to the individual in the context of structural inequalities and access to resources. Empowerment involves “awareness raising, building self-confidence, expansion of choice, involvement in decision making and increased access to and control over resources.”¹⁷ Women's empowerment does not refer to “power over” men. The negative definition of power, as Jo Rowlands explains, should be “contrasted with an ‘energy’ definition of power, ‘power to’ or ‘power with.’ This model of power is not zero-sum; one person's increase in power does not necessarily diminish that of another.”¹⁸ What is more, this individual sense of empowerment needs to be complemented with women's social, political, economic, and legal empowerment to have any significant and lasting impact on their lives.

Awareness, choice, and access to resources are crucial for empowerment. Often women, as in Afghanistan, internalize their low social status and view it as personal deficiency. Awareness-raising efforts direct women's attention toward structural and cultural causes of their disempowerment and restore their confidence in their own abilities. “The very first outcome of awareness generation is likely to be rejection of the legitimacy of subordinated social status for women.”¹⁹

Empowerment relates to agency and one's “ability to define one's goals and act upon them.”²⁰ Women's ability to set goals and achieve them, however, has been undermined by lack of access to and control of resources, limiting their choices. The paths to women's empowerment can be paved by addressing their practical as well as their strategic needs.²¹

“Practical gender needs” refer to women's needs in their socially accepted roles pertaining to child care, living conditions, access to food and water, employment, and the like. Addressing practical gender needs, though highly important, does not challenge the patriarchal power structure directly or in the short term. Yet it contributes to the improved position of women in the long term.

“Strategic gender interest” refers to a transformative change in power relations between men and women that leads to gender equality, the goal of gender mainstreaming. Addressing strategic gender interests is an ideal that needs to be pursued and planned for, but it should be accompanied by measures that address women's immediate and practical needs.

Women's empowerment must be “culturally specific and women must find their own way and their own appropriate means.”²² Efforts should be made to directly engage Afghan women, allowing them to articulate their needs and preferences in terms of access to resources and social services. Likewise, Afghan men need to be part of this engagement, giving them the opportunity to be partners with women and supporting their causes. Drawing on input from Afghan women and men, the Afghan government and the national and international NGOs should provide social services and resources that facilitate and support women's empowerment. These incremental changes, in the long run, will pave the way for achieving gender equality in Afghanistan.

Afghan men have been projected as oppressors and as unified groups opposed to women's advancement. But the truth is that many Afghan men, from all walks of life, have supported women's causes, including during the Taliban regime.²³ Nevertheless, all Afghan men have been shamed for the misogynist attitudes of some Afghans. The outsiders' ahistorical and slanted views of Afghan men have created an artificial divide between Afghan men and women and effectively narrowed Afghan women's base of support. Indeed, some Afghan men oppose women's advancement, but their opposition, in large part, has been to a particular policy model and context of its implementation and not necessarily to women's improved status.

The pro-Soviet regimes of the 1980s best exemplify how ill-conceived implementation can undermine a policy. For example, though many Afghan men and women were in favor of women's education in principle, they were offended by the regime's parading of dancing female students in the street and televising their dance nationwide,²⁴ showcasing the women as the embodiment of their policy success. Thus some Afghans turned against the regime and women's education. Rural compulsory education suffered from ill implementation as well. The use of force rather than persuasion and long-term engagement with the opponents derailed a progressive policy that could have positively impacted gender relations. Accordingly, when the government aggressively pushed for rural women's education and “forced men to send their wives and daughters to the literacy centers,” it provoked bitter public reaction.²⁵

Although patriarchal culture is strong in Afghanistan and has left its imprints on women's private and public lives, not all Afghan men are opposed to all aspects of women's advancement, and these differences need to be recognized. To begin with, men's resistance and opposition to women's access to education, health care, and employment need to be contextualized and addressed by the Afghan government and international donors involved in Afghanistan's reconstruction.

In general—despite sensational accusations to the contrary—Afghan fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons are not against female members of the family seeking medical care. Yet access to medical facilities located far from rural villages, where transportation is scarce and roads unsafe, is a major problem throughout the country. The high costs of visiting doctors and purchasing medicine frequently force families to have to decide between medical care and feeding themselves. The limited number of existing free clinics can hardly meet the demands. Investment in public safety, medical facilities, and availability of low-cost or free medical services staffed by women would improve women's access to health care.

Many men are indeed in favor of education but fear abduction of their children and public violence. Access to school often means long distances to travel on foot on unsafe roads. Considering the risks, some fathers naturally oppose their daughters' education out of affection and for their own good.

Some men are opposed to women's education on the ground that it is un-Islamic. They associate educated women with promiscuity and view urban women as immoral. A national campaign by the government to establish permissibility of women's education in Islam would set the stage for diminishing men's opposition. Some efforts have already been made in this direction but need to be expanded substantially to have any lasting impact.

Men's resistance to women's employment needs to be contextualized within Muslim men's financial responsibility toward female members of their family. According to the Qurʼan, men are assigned the task of financially maintaining the family, particularly female members.²⁶ Providing for family members is an important construct of Afghan masculine identity and concepts of honorable manhood. Even when women have financial resources, they are not expected to support the family (yet it is usually welcomed when the need arises). When men cannot provide for their families, it puts enormous stress on everyone. The sense of shame and inadequacy may turn these men against women's employment. Improving men's employment opportunities would restore men's confidence in their ability as providers and lower their opposition to women's employment and self-employment. It needs to be noted that, until relatively recently, men resisted women's employment, even in the West. Yet across time and with socioeconomic and political developments, men's attitudes toward women's employment have significantly changed. Such change is most likely to occur in Afghanistan as well.

The cited examples illustrate that men's concerns are contextual, and contexts are not static but continue to change. They also show that most men do support women's causes. Even the outlooks of men who do not currently favor women's causes can be turned around. That could only happen through culturally appropriate ways of gender awareness. Awareness-raising can indeed benefit women as well, because many have internalized and accepted their low social status.

Though it would have been ideal to carry on a nationwide gender awareness campaign, it is not practical at this early stage. Considering the existing realities in Afghanistan, too much emphasis on women has been counterproductive. Some Afghan men view publicity surrounding women's status as the imposition of Western concepts of individualism and women's self-centeredness that run counter to Afghan culture and Afghans' familial, communal, and tribal belonging and identities. Responding to a question about what should be done for Afghan women, Rahmat, a 56-year-old chemical engineer stated with frustration, “Let me tell you something. You need to take this question in Afghanistan terms, not American.”²⁷ Najib, a 28-year-old medical student, echoed the sentiment: “Afghanistan is not America or Europe. We believe in women's modesty and do not want our women to imitate Western women and dishonor our family and community.”²⁸

Raising awareness on the status of Afghan women can take place in decentralized forms through mosques, local councils, and NGOs working at the grassroots levels. The mass media, particularly radio, can play an important role. Content and language must reflect Afghanistan's diverse culture and incorporate culturally relevant concepts such as respect, generosity, pride, and the Islamic notions of equality, rights, and social justice.

Awareness-raising needs to be accompanied by education on women's rights in Islam. Efforts have been made in this direction, and some NGOs have built gender awareness and human rights education into their programs. But more is needed, and with the support of the government and international donors, human rights education through community development for both men and women can be expanded. These men would be more likely to support and participate in women's empowerment. But how to translate men's awareness into their engagement in women's causes is the key.

Experiences of countries such as Yemen show that small-scale and community- based programs work best when they are issue-specific and relevant to men's and women's lives. Yemen is not an ideal model for gender equality, due to its similarity with Afghanistan in terms of gender relations, but it can serve as an example of a beginning. In Yemen, Oxfam along with its partners from civil society organizations started by raising men's awareness through egalitarian Islamic codes, gaining men's and women's trust, securing their commitment, and establishing shared goals.²⁹ By engaging men in women's empowerment, effectively women's social base of support grows and the possibility for reform in their status naturally increases.

It is imperative to bring Afghan men and women together through shared goals and projects and to draw on their collective energies and resources to advance women's causes, allowing them to chart their own paths to empowerment and work toward gender equality. Policy approaches, including gender mainstreaming, are merely the means to achieve the goal of gender equality. The policy approach advancing this goal must correspond to the context of operation, and the policy frame must fit Afghanistan and its cultural and socioeconomic realities.³⁰