In 2010 Reuters released an expert poll that declared Afghanistan to be the most dangerous country in the world for women. The poll of experts across the world looked at things such as health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking. The pursuit of women’s rights is a struggle in Afghanistan.

Photo: Francis Ritchie

According to a 2011 article, Afghanistan scored the worst in a number of areas

Afghanistan emerged as the most dangerous country for women overall and worst in three of the six risk categories: health, non-sexual violence and lack of access to economic resources.

Respondents cited sky-high maternal mortality rates, limited access to doctors and a near total lack of economic rights. Afghan women have a one in 11 chance of dying in childbirth…

To try and improve the situation for women, Afghanistan’s President, Harmid Karzai approved a piece of law by decree in 2009 that provided more protections for women – it addressed basic women’s rights. It included things like making sure women could not get married until they are 16 (for men it is 18), shelters for female victims of domestic violence and limiting the number of women a man could marry to two.

That law needed to be endorsed by the Afghanistan Parliament and was recently delayed indefinitely due to conservative groups within parliament disagreeing with the above clauses, using extremely problematic arguments to do so. Because of it, Afghanistan remains without some of the basic protections for women that many other countries take for granted.

Women’s rights are an issue in many countries for many different reasons and it is often this issue that is at the forefront of a lot of community development within economically poor communities. Protection of women, their access to basic civil rights, education and upward mobility gives us one of the keys to solving many social issues.

The sad fact of the matter is that it is often the tie between cultural and religious practices and views that halts such movement. The approach of some is then to rally against religion. Often though, I would say it is poor religious justifications that are being used to prop up entrenched cultural norms and that the key to unlocking these is not pushing against the religion itself (usually such a push will be rejected), but finding ways to enter into dialogue with it that challenges those poor justifications by using the wider religious framework and finding touch-points that question the cultural norm.

Thinking about how this works in the framework of my own Christian faith, western history has often been dogged by poor views of women that have been justified using the Bible – finding ways to view women as subservient to men… and it still happens. Of course, the knee-jerk reaction is to kick against the Bible and many do but that doesn’t do anything to further the thinking of those who are still going to hold their framework dearly.

Let me give you an example of how it can work using Christianity and the Bible (I’m not an expert on the Qu’ran so can’t speak to the situation in Afghanistan directly).

In Christianity there have been a few key themes used to paint women as somehow subservient to and lesser than men. The first is the idea that women were created as a ‘helper’ for men, that it was the woman who caused the ‘fall’, the idea that the man is the head of the woman (with the understanding of ‘headship’ being interpreted through cultural lenses) and then there is Paul’s instructions to women in the early Church movement where we need to be very careful with context.

I could go into them all but will deal with the first and give a broad sweep to affirm how it plays out across scripture.

Women as ‘Helper’

Genesis 2:18 has been used a lot to paint women as subservient to men. It says

“The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

That word ‘helper’ has been problematic for a very long time and in some theologies, still is. It gets heard as women being created to meet the needs of men and serve them. That then colours how one reads about women through the rest of scripture.

There is another way to read it that still has a high regard for scripture, so still sits within the larger framework of the believer but furthers the argument for women’s rights. That word ‘helper’ is translated from the Hebrew word ‘ezer’ that comes from two root words that mean ‘to rescue/save’ and ‘strong’. It is a word often used to denote God’s relationship to Israel (Exodus 18:4; Deut 33:7; Psalm 124:8 and the list goes on). In each of these references we would never interpret the words used as saying that God is subservient to humanity. Instead it is read as something strong and needed. There is nothing in Genesis 2 that should cause us to read that word as anything less than something strong and needed. It’s a recognition that man was missing something and that the answer was a strong equal that could rescue him from what was missing. The man backs up a sense of equality in verse 23 and the whole thing only affirms God’s creation of the both of them in His image in Genesis 1:27.

Starting with this viewpoint then shifts the entire reading of the scriptural approach to women. Sure, there is still stuff there that many 21st century westerners will struggle with, but the trajectory changes. It puts a different spin on Mary being the one called to mother Christ, it helps us see the significance of Jesus’ approach to women (radical in his time) and it helps us see the place of women ministering alongside men in the early Church. It informs us that these weren’t anomalies, but the way it was always supposed to be.

That’s only one small case in how dialogue within the framework of religious discourse can further desperately needed women’s rights. Afghanistan needs that sort of dialogue and the action that can roll from it. I’d be interested to know how such dialogue can occur within the framework of Islam.