Sylvia's Journal

We are now getting the English language Afghanistan Times delivered at our workplace, one for each guesthouse. The masthead promises ‘eye on the news’ that is ‘truthful, factual and unbiased.’ It is also a source for positive stories about Afghanistan, one of the few in print. That is why we requested a subscription.

Today I started coalition building in our own organization by calling all the female staff (all 14 of the 225 staff in total – a sorry state I hope to change). We are in the process of creating child care on the premises and we brainstormed today, in Dari and English, on how to celebrate International Women’s Day – a day not celebrated at MSH/Afghanistan since 2004.

Apparently it required the presence of a ‘Gender Specialist.’ With the gender specialist (my former colleague Miho from Japan) gone, the celebrations stopped. This is a problem with specialization and making the gender awareness a job of a specialist.

Last summer I sat in on a meeting with a bunch of male Anglos (US, Australia and Britain), some of them consultants, some colleagues, as well as some male Afghan colleagues. I was the only woman. No sooner had someone uttered the word gender or all eyes were on me, the assumption that the token woman must therefore be the gender specialist. Don’t get me going on this.

Our ‘MSH/Afghanistan Women Unite!’ meeting, chaired by one of my more promising young female staff, confirmed how badly coalitions are needed. I noticed how powerless the women felt and how unacknowledged and unrecognized. This is the problem with being a victim: you give all your power away.

Although it is generally true that Afghan women got dealt a lousy hand, I do believe that some of the victimization is self imposed: no one took their scarf off in our all-female meeting; no one is stepping out from behind the curtains of the musty light-less women’s dining closet. I don’t hear anyone say: we won’t take this any longer. I am the one saying it, maybe because I can and they feel they cannot.

So today was a first step – I learned some things and they learned some things too. Everyone got a job: looking for images and stories of inspiring Afghan women we can parade in front of our men, a quiz to test our staff’s knowledge about women’s status here in Afghanistan, some poetry from famous female poets, a short video and maybe individual testimonials. We will meet again next week – that’s a least a small victory.