Dickinson College student works to end violence against women in Afghanistan

It’s hard to listen to Noorjahan Akbar.

Her English — which is one of the handful of languages she speaks fluently — is not the problem. The 21-year-old crafts eloquent sentences. Her voice rises and dips with emotion as she describes a passionate commitment to end physical abuse and economic oppression of her sister Afghanis.

No, it is the barriers Akbar confronts in seeking her goals that cause a listener to wince.

Her goals are simple to understand, at least in the Western world.

Women in her home country of Afghanistan should be able to study, earn degrees and work. They should be able to postpone marriage until they are adults, and choose the person they wed. They should be free to walk to a store, or to school or to work without being sexually assaulted, then blamed for the attacks which they have no legal right to deflect.

All freedoms taken for granted in the U.S.

Then, hearing Akbar is hard for another reason. One that any Western parent can understand: Akbar’s fight for equitable treatment for women puts her own safety at great risk.

It was unthinkable for women and men in the Middle Eastern country to do what Akbar and Anita Haidary did last year: They and 50 others carried signs and walked down a street in western Kabul in protest of the common practice of sexually attacking women in the street.

The action, and Akbar’s and Haidary’s formation of the group that led the walk, Young Women for Change, drew international attention and acclaim. Last March, the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders named Akbar a 2012 Woman of Distinction. That same month, she joined the Women of the World summit in New York. And, in August, Akbar was listed among nominees for Forbes’ “Most Powerful Women in the World” issue.

Those accolades would be cold comfort if anything happened to Akbar and her parents knew it. But they didn’t stop her.

“They were afraid for me. Many other parents would simply ask their daughters to give up and say ‘You know what, just stay in the U.S. where you will not be in trouble,'” Akbar said.

But she said her journalist father and teacher mother have supported her and four sisters, two of whom have been to college and graduate school and are in professional careers.

“My mother was one of the first women in her district to finish college to become a teacher. I grew up with an inspirational woman in my life, my mom. My father raised us with the values of humanity and serving justice. My parents really influenced how I think and what I dedicate my time to,” Akbar said.

She said the idea to work for gender equity had been growing in her since she was a girl.

“I faced a lot of discrimination like other women in my society. Literature was derogatory. I think I noticed that because I was raised in a family that didn’t believe those ideas that women are inferior,” Akbar said.

She saw that, as a girl, academics and a career could be restricted in a country where women are considered the property of men. Still, Akbar and the women who work with Young Women for Change are not anti-men. In fact, she said men also are victims of their society.

“Creating solidarity among women is very important but not at the cost of alienating men who can have equally important voices for equality,” she said.

It never occurred to Akbar to turn her back on a country where women encounter lifelong misery and abuse that includes public whippings, even execution for actions they may not have committed and which would be legal and normal in other nations. Where 57 percent of girls marry before their 16th birthday, most forced into the union. Where, Akbar said, polygamy is common.

Although her family left Afghanistan during the official Taliban reign, Akbar’s parents moved them back to when the regime was toppled in 2001. They supported her moving to Philadelphia to attend high school at a private Quaker boarding school, then her enrollment at Dickinson.

She returns home each summer to continue her volunteer work with Young Women for Change. She works as a translator and research consultant to earn money to help her family.

Like other young adults abroad, Akbar gets homesick. She has good friends in Carlisle and elsewhere in the U.S. At Dickinson, she finds time to talk with them, watch movies and make colorful collages that serve as de-stressers for her busy days. Akbar is a sociology major and works in the college media center as a student supervisor.

But she wants to take a break before beginning graduate studies. She misses her family, which also includes two younger brothers.

And there is support from women and men in her homeland who are grateful for her efforts.

“I will go back to work there. As long as I can make things better for the people who have given me so much love, so much respect and dignity,” Akbar said.

Keeping women’s status in Afghanistan part of her country’s discourse and policy making is critical right now. She will continue to report on conditions through social media.

“As political situations become more oppressive, Afghanistan women feel they are being more ignored, not just by our own country but (internationally),” she said.

“Given how increasingly unstable Afghanistan is, I think it’s hard to dream, to imagine what the future will be. Hopefully, women will be at least equal in the law and involved in political situations because women’s political involvement is essential,” Akbar said.

Source: The Patriot News