Anthropologist discusses rise in status of women in Afghanistan

In the two years since the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and the fall of the Taliban, the political and cultural position of Afghan women has improved, said Micheline Centlivres-Demont, a professor of anthropology at the University of Neuchatel in Switzerland in a lecture yesterday.

However, Afghan women continue to face violence and persecution throughout the country, she said. Repression is especially prevalent in rural areas controlled by local warlords.

"[Afghanistan] is a little less oppressive than that of yesterday, but even though the situation has improved significantly many challenges remain," she said. "Many women are still restricted in their participation in public life."

The lecture, titled "Afghan Women Before and After the Taliban: Neither Shari'ah nor Women's Lib," is the first in the Leon Poullada Memorial Lecture Series, sponsored by the Program in Near Eastern Studies, which runs through tomorrow.

The Afghan interim government, established in June 2002 and led by President Hamid Karzai, has brought hope to the country and especially to its women, Centlivres-Demont said. A new constitution is being drafted and democratic elections are scheduled for next June.

Schools for both boys and girls are now open throughout the country, and women are generally free to go out in public without a male escort. In urban areas women have much greater access to employment, health care and education, Centlivres-Demont said.

Many of these reforms result from a top-down effort to modernize Afghanistan rather than a real women's movement, she said. Throughout the 20th century, efforts to improve women's rights have followed this pattern; the emancipation movement has never been led by Afghan women.

Because of this connection between emancipation and modernization, the movement toward full female emancipation is hindered by the views that associate emancipation with the West. The link mobilizes religious and community leaders against reform efforts.

"Many women's claims [for greater rights and freedoms] appear to be Western impositions in the eyes of Afghan male population," Centlivres-Demont said. "It is easy for the conservative population to hold up any measure that would facilitate equality as Western, Christian ideology. One has to show that emancipation is not a promotion of shameless behavior among women or a war between the genders."

Western journalists often focus on the continued use of the burka, traditional Muslim veil that covers the head and upper body of Afghan women as a symbol of Taliban oppression, Centlivres-Demont said.

But she said Afghan women have worn the burka for centuries, and for many women it represents cultural empowerment rather than male oppression.

"For some women, the burka symbolizes a collective identity of belonging to Islam and Afghanistan, a symbol that must be protected against cultural expansion of the Western way of life," Centlivres-Demont said. "Some women I met said that they felt comfortable with it and wouldn't take it off just because the West want it."

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Women's rights remain a vexing issue in an ever-complicated Afghanistan, but she said conservative voices do not speak for the entire country.

"The urbanized middle class is strongly in favor of a new role for women," Centlivres-Demont said. "They are promoting the example of the educated woman who is a well-rounded person and a responsible citizen of a Muslim country."

The lecture series, which will continue today and tomorrow, is an annual event focusing on issues in Islamic society and Middle Eastern studies. This year the series addresses the changing values and social practices of Afghanistan in the 21st century.

Pierre Centlivres, professor emeritus of anthropology and former director of the Institute for Ethnology at the University of Neuchatel, will deliver two lectures titled "Afghan Exiles: From Marginality to Reintegration?" today and "Iconomania and Inconophobia in Afghanistan: Religious and Political Images, From Zaher Shah to bin Laden" tomorrow.

"We thought that Afghanistan was a major topic that should be covered at this time," said M. Sukru Hanioglu, a professor in the near eastern studies department who helped organize the event. "Many people don't know the basics of the what's happening here, so we hope that after the series people will have a good idea of the situation in Afghanistan and will be able to make an evaluation based on these presentations."