While a man abandoned his wife two days after she had undergone a family planning operation in Odisha, the sale of contraceptives was banned in Afghanistan. Under the spell of superstition, the husband who belongs to Bhuyan tribe of Keonjhar district said that his wife turned impure after undergoing the process of family planning operation. On the other hand, the Taliban considers that the use of contraceptives by women is a western conspiracy to control the Muslim population. In both the cases, the rights and dignity of the women have been under attack. Women are considered as machines for procreation.
In the first incident, although the woman has already given birth to eleven children, the man still wants that his wife should be in a position to produce more children. In the second, the Taliban has imposed policies which have created huge barriers to women’s health and education, curtailed their freedom of movement, expression, association and deprived many of them of earning their livelihood.
In the context of political instability, widespread unemployment, acute poverty and ecological degradation, Afghanistan is facing a new ferment of political action initiated by the Taliban. In some cases, the struggles were launched from party fronts or from joint fronts like coalitions of parties. In this jolt, the Taliban tries to get the support of fundamentalists by putting a large number of questions about sanctity of religion and power structures which include the issues of male-female relationship, women’s sexuality, unequal access to resources enjoyed by men and women etc.
Apparently, the history repeats itself just like in French Revolution where the women were struggling not only for economic crisis but also had to stand against the male chauvinistic society which never treated them equally. This brings out the most crucial question to all of us “Is gender-equality a myth?”, or "Is it difficult for certain set of minds to accept it?" The Taliban has clearly mentioned about the impact of westernisation on their country, while they have understood the root cause of the liberal mindsets of many Afghan women, which is the education they have received. Much of this is related to their religious-political propaganda which views the concepts of civil rights and rights of women as ‘Western ideas’ that pose a threat to the sanctity of the religious, social and political health of their country. The Taliban has been operating on fuelling this induced fear of persecution by the Western countries who want to weaken them using the gimmicks of ‘human rights’, ‘civil rights’ and ‘rights of women’ to break their bond with their cultural roots, and linking it to the political disturbances experienced by them in the past few decades. This strategy has often been used by tyrannical forces to win support of the masses by portraying other cultures and nations as a threat to the well-being of their own. There is little doubt that these views are driven by the misogynistic, patriarchal and primitive ideology that the Taliban latches on to in the name of religious sanctity.
In a series of debates and deliberations on the issue, it has been found that while all women are in some way disadvantaged in comparison to the men, all women do not suffer the same level or kind of discrimination. The concerns of the educated and upper-class women are different from the illiterate women just as the concerns of the tribal and Dalit women are different from those of the upper caste women. In a country like India with high PDI (Power Distribution Index), collectivistic, patriarchal culture, low literacy rates and relative backwardness of the tribal and lower caste communities, there are higher chances that primitive superstitions led norms to over-ride the basic rights of the individuals, especially women. The tribal and lower caste women not only have lesser accessibility to education and employment, healthcare and other general needs, they are also more likely to be unenlightened of the rights and liberties the law provides them.
Thus, they are at far greater risk of experiencing exploitation in their groups by their male counterparts who themselves might know no better than the norms they all have grown up imbibing. There has also been greater recognition that both men and women are constrained by the dominant gender identities. In patriarchal societies, men feel that they must be strong and successful whereas in a gender-just society, both men and women are allowed to be free. This of course rests on the idea that for true freedom to grow, injustices against women have to end in social, economic and political spheres.
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