Educated Afghan women in search of their identities
Sharif, Sharifa
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/21204
Description
Title
Educated Afghan women in search of their identities
Author(s)
Sharif, Sharifa
Issue Date
1994
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Peshkin, Alan
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Women's Studies
Education, Social Sciences
Language
eng
Abstract
This study was conducted among educated and uneducated working women of Kabul, Afghanistan, during 1986-88, to determine how these women dealt with the dual role of home and office while the predominant tradition of Islam encourage their confinement to the private domain of home, and to the role of mothers and housewives. An overview of Islamic values related to the status, role, and sexuality of women, along with a review of situation of women in Afghanistan, provided the background information for the text.
The educated group consisted of middle-class elite women who worked in the government offices as professional and administrators. The uneducated group included economic lower-class women who worked as the breadwinners for their families. The traditional structure of the society predominated by Islamic values, the particular political situation, the war that had caused severe man power loss, and the development state of the country provided the basic framework for the analysis and discussion of the issues in this study.
While the participation of women in the public sphere of offices and factories was very visible, the stories of the women suggested that the Afghan women were caught in between two pillars of traditional and modern expectations. Economic and family survival positively affected the perception of both the women and the society towards the public role. This was evident from the comparative analysis of the perception of the groups of women of the study. The study concluded that the participation of the Afghan women in the public sphere of work was an adaptation to the modern structure while it was not integrated to the infrastructure of the society. Afghan women as the first generation of modernization beneficiaries were meanwhile victims of unresolved conflicts between traditional and modern conflicts.
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