Sylvia's Journal

My biggest regret today was that I don’t understand Dari as well as I should to follow the conversations during this morning’s alignment meeting with several of the Midwives’ Association’s stakeholders. It is hard to coach people when you don’t understand exactly who is saying what. The only thing I could do was reacting to signs of derailment and requesting a quick whisper translation before intervening.

M. facilitated several pieces of today’s agenda. She was nervous, and had probably been sweating all through the weekend, but she performed just fine and none of the nervousness showed. It is always like that – nervousness is mostly noticeable inside, not on the outside. I am pleased with the results of our gentle pushing – we are all one experience wiser. We will do an after action review later this week, before I leave. There were many teachable moments, even after the fact.

I continue to see the consequences of the awkward dynamics between men and women, especially older men and younger women. The longer I am in this country the more I believe that Afghanistan’s troubles partially stem from the unequal and uncomfortable relations men and women have with each other outside the home. The inability of professional women, especially young ones, to tactfully challenge their male colleagues means there is nothing to put the brakes on their behavior except the man’s own willingness to observe what he is doing or ask for someone else to do that. Luckily A. is like that.

It also means there is little room for women to experiment as a way to learn how to facilitate conversations with dominant men in the room. I learned the trade by challenging (or gentle confrontation) and then I noticed the response and compared it to the effect I had intended. Over time this is how one learns and expands one’s repertoire. The main thing is that I, as a woman, can do this sort of experimenting without risking life and limb. It’s not clear how that could happen here.

The pattern I have observed is that when men violate agreements, dismiss or belittle women as full partners, the women, unable to confront this, exit behind their chadoors and into their private spaces where they talk with their sisters, increasing the upset through mutual reinforcement.

A few young women in this country have dared to challenge men in public, older and powerful men, but the consequences have been deadly. And so there is little incentive to change the situation. As a result the vicious circle is reinforced over and over, unbreakable it seems: the women remain unable to engage directly with the men who they criticize (at best) and despise (at worst). I sometimes joke that this is a 1000 year project. But for Afghan women this is no joke.

My grey hair comes in handy, as does my (birth) nationality and the fact that I am a creature that doesn’t fit into any of the clearly delineated gender roles. I am direct, sometimes very direct. I don’t know really how that goes over except that it doesn’t appear to have damaged my relationships. I say ‘appear’ because the indirectness makes it impossible to gauge the impact of one’s behavior on others.

And since appearances are so important here, I treat ‘what appears’ as ‘what is.’ I don’t know how else I could do my job.