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Appropriating relevant elements from Iranian film scholar Hamid Naficy's formulation of an 'Accented Cinema' (2001) that addresses various aspects of diasporic filmmaking and filmmakers 'situated in the interstices of social formations and cinematic practices' (4) as guiding tropes for analysis, this paper focuses on the depiction of the post-Taliban period through a contextual and critical reading of Nelofer Pazira's first documentary film Return to Kandahar (2003) and her debut feature film Act of Dishonour (2009) on the topic of 'honour-killing.' The paper examines how these films portray 'accented' images captured and relayed by a diaspora Afghan woman filmmaker to appeal to distant and unversed Western/foreign audiences and film festivals. In addition to Naficy's formulation of the 'accented cinema', I argue that Pazira uses a formulaic accent and variances (also to be read as her emphases) in her depictions that are aimed specifically at appealing to Western audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study that examines how gender has been referenced in United Nations (UN), supranational and state documents on forced migration over the past 40 years. It is motivated by the premise that humanitarian protection discourses reflect broader institutional priorities and ideologies and may therefore expose gaps that reveal the relative importance given to the category of gender. The evidence presented below is the result of an extensive review of policy documents on Afghanistan, Kurdistan Region-Iraq (KRI), and Sri Lanka contained in the Refworld database. 1 The study sought to understand how gender is mentioned in terms of 1. governmentality — a top-down policy preference, which emphasizes the management of humanitarian protection; 2. empowerment — a bottom up policy preference, which emphasizes self-actualization and self-determination: we seek to understand how agency is expressed, including how opportunities for participation feature in policy discourse; 3. inclusion — the scope of coverage of different gender categories in policy discourse; and, 4. differentiation — the particularization of needs, wishes, and demands made by women, men, and girls and boys in displacement settings. The paper finds: • Where gender and displacement are discussed together, there is greater emphasis on governmentality, which crowds out other objectives, including advancing opportunities for gender empowerment and participation. • Internally displaced persons (IDPs) tend to be treated as an operational challenge alongside security and peacebuilding. The nature of their displacement is implicit in these documents, associated within the recurring themes of land, violence, empowerment, and livelihoods. The documents mention violence, but do not widely cover maternal, sexual, and reproductive health. • The documents offer little insight into the identities of the displaced — whether female, male, children, or members of LGBT communities — and are mostly silent on their specific protection needs. Overall, the paper finds remarkably little integration of gender within the humanitarian literature on forced displacement. In spite of much advocacy by the UN, the concept of gender has not been effectively disaggregated to address the specific needs of IDPs, especially in the discussion of children. This paper argues that taking gender seriously means recognizing how protection needs may be shaped by power relationships, and how policy and practice would be enhanced by a more nuanced understanding of how vulnerabilities and opportunities are structured by gender and the specificities of the displacement context. It recommends that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and partner UN agencies continue to find opportunities to bring humanitarian policy on gender and forced displacement into conversation in order to strengthen protection. To this end, it suggests that the concept of gender should be disaggregated to address the specific needs of displaced people, to reflect the wider range of identities of displaced people, and to foster opportunities for their empowerment, and participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequitable access to education is a widely acknowledged development challenge, an issue even more pronounced in conflict-affected communities like Afghanistan, where insecurity and violence targeted against education exacerbates barriers that keep children, especially girls, from going to school. To address these challenges, Baghch-e-Simsim (BSS), a locally produced children's television show, has focused on academic skills and gender equity for children and their families in Afghanistan. This paper will analyze the impact of BSS on the views of gender norms of children and parents using data from two studies: a nationally representative quasi-experimental evaluation of 3025 TV-viewing households and an in-depth qualitative encourage-to-view study of twenty households in Kabul. Overall findings will show that families who frequently view BSS have more gender equitable beliefs. Findings will also show that there is variability among parents on the appropriateness of boys and girls playing together outside, largely driven by security concerns rather than cultural gender norms. Recommendations will focus on the importance of continuing to create mass media content for young children that supports gender equity, but that content must also begin to reflect and address the security concerns facing parents that keep girls out of school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women in Afghanistan, taking advantage of the opportunities provided by their country's reconstruction efforts in the early 2000s, worked diligently to ensure that the new Afghan constitution included important rights for women, including the advancement of right to political representation. Indeed the 2004 Afghan constitution reserved at least 27% of the lower house parliamentary seats for women, guaranteeing their presence in formal political decision-making. Although women's political presence came to a sudden halt with the unexpected fall of the Afghan government in August 2021, this paper argues that the Afghan gender quota provision nonetheless has important symbolic implications for Afghan women's political roles in two central ways. First, the quotas, which were a long-time in the making, justified women's political presence to themselves as well as their male-dominated political and cultural context. Second, with the sudden coming to power of the Taliban in 2021, the quotas have greatly contributed to invigorating local women's protests and their key demand for women's political representation, comprising one of the most outspoken anti-Taliban and pro-democracy forces. Despite backlash from the militant Taliban, women, with the support of diverse transnational solidarity networks, are refusing to be silent, demanding equal inclusion in the country's political structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quasi-idiomatic expression 'women have to prove themselves' reflects various performance pressures and heightened visibility of women functioning in gendered professional spaces as advocated by tokenism theory. It is an example of how discriminatory practice – according to which competent and qualified women entering the culturally masculine professions are explicitly and implicitly expected to work harder for any recognition – gets discoursed in language and becomes a "rhetorically powerful form of talk" (Kitzinger 2000: 124). This paper explores the question: what is it that U.S. servicewomen functioning in the culturally hypermasculine space need to do to prove themselves? To this end, qualitative semi-structured interviews with women veterans of the recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are qualitatively scrutinized with the methods of discourse analysis and conversation analysis to 1) identify practices that U.S. servicewomen engage in to symbolically (re-)claim their place and status in the military, i.e., to prove they belong; 2) find out how the talk around proving emerged in the course of the conversation and how it was further interactionally sustained and/or dealt with in talk-in-interaction. The findings of the micro-level analysis – interpreted through the lenses of tokenism and the category of the 'honorary man' – reveal women's complex and nuanced struggle to fit and find acceptance in the military culture of hypermasculinity. They also re-engage with the ideas of tokenism by demonstrating that various acts of proving, reflecting women's token status, may concurrently and paradoxically be a means to earn honorary man status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to show the relevance and applicability of Martha Nussbaum's Capability Approach (MNCA) in feminism to the lives of the women in Afghanistan-Pakistan (Af-Pak) regions who are impacted by war, underdevelopment, entrenched patriarchy and religious fundamentalism and face its deadly repercussions on their daily lives and human rights. Contrary to the reductionist representation of women in these regions in terms of their religio-cultural identity, this article bases itself in their harsh, socio-economic-political reality, history of the cold war, erosion of democratic institutions, war on terror and the rise of militarism and nationalism. Thus, issues of development, specifically, gender gap and human rights need to be brought centre-stage to address the systematic violation of women's rights. The MNCA, being rooted in the dignity and personhood of each individual, is an indispensable baseline in terms of basic human rights for women in the Af-Pak region. Here, I show how the MNCA does not contradict institutions of family, culture and religion in the region and actually serves to build a bridge between universality and the specific local context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While women's political inclusion is central to international conflict resolution efforts, public attitudes in conflict states towards women's political inclusion remain understudied. We expect insecurity to depress support for female political leadership in conflicts where women's political inclusion is violently contested. Citizens wanting security through force prefer male leaders because of stereotypes privileging men's military prowess. However, citizens wanting security through reconciliation also favour men for fear that female leadership would provoke more violence. We assess these expectations with experimental and observational data from the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. In the survey experiment, priming respondents to think about insecurity decreases support for female leadership, but only among women. In observational data, insecurity correlates with more polarized attitudes towards women's political representation in some regions and greater support for female leaders in others. Insecurity's impact on public support for female leadership in conflict states may be highly heterogeneous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social Sciences Studies is the property of Social Sciences Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Central to the goal of 'hearts and minds' counterinsurgency is the need for knowledge, understanding and influence in relation to local populations. Building on feminist scholarship on counterinsurgency, the article focuses on the 'female engagement' work undertaken by four programmes developed by the US military between 2003 and 2014. The article offers three key arguments. First, it maintains that the gendered subjectivities of Iraqi and Afghan women and US female counterinsurgents are constructed as strategic assets and as vulnerable subjects. Second, these programmes reveal the extent to which gendered counterinsurgency is constituted and regulated by emotional and embodied norms and rules for both female soldiers and civilians. Third, it suggests that the discursive construction of 'winning hearts and minds' works to render less visible the violence of gendered counterinsurgency practices. Although gendered counterinsurgency mobilizes a relational ontology predicated on the emotional labour required for developing knowledge of the Iraqi and Afghan 'other', female engagement activities cannot escape the logic of instrumental reasoning within which they are located. Ultimately, recognizing the policy of female engagement as central to forms of knowledge production reveals the extent to which the violences of war rely on a complex set of gendered and affective relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine and analyse the Ideological construction of gender representation in Nadia Hashmi's The Pearl That Broke Its Shell from the perspective of Critical discourse analysis. The study has been conducted in a socially constructed Bacha Posh tradition which has been practiced in Afghanistan for several generations. To unpack gender representation and ideological construction of gender in the discourse structures, the researcher has used M.M Lazar's FCDA praxis. Lazar's theoretical and methodological considerations offer a systematic inquiry to the researcher to dig out the ideological construction and unequal representation of gender. The current study revealed that gender is a social and cultural phenomenon and central female characters in the discourse structures are represented unequally, socially, culturally politically and economically through linguistic structures. Further studies are required to investigate the effect of polygamy and early marriages on the lives of girls in Afghan society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Limited research on experiences of women, who constitute a double vulnerable group in both women and refugee status, regarding sexual and reproductive health. The purpose of this study is to examine the knowledge, beliefs, and cultural practices of Afghan women living in Türkiye regarding sexual and reproductive health. Method: This descriptive phenomenological study was conducted with 18 Afghan refugee women. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data. Results: Four themes emerged from interviews: cultural practices and beliefs related to pregnancy and postpartum, use of contraceptive methods, gender-based violence, and access to health services. Conclusions: Afghan women have different cultural practices regarding prenatal, pregnancy, and postpartum and lack of knowledge about sexual and reproductive health. Considering individual differences in sexual and reproductive health, providing sensitive, supportive, and informative services is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the commodification of women in Afghanistan through an in-depth analysis of the anonymous Afghani-authored short story, "I Am For Sale, Who Will Buy Me" (2010). Employing a Materialist Feminist lens and drawing upon Silvia Federici's theoretical framework in Caliban and the Witch (2004), the study examines the influence of religious doctrines on women's social and economic status, culminating in their marginalization. The analysis dissects the exploitation of gender roles, objectification of female bodies, and the commodification of Afghan women, revealing the intricate interplay between patriarchal systems, religious ideologies, and gender disparity. Additionally, the study explores historical and contemporary challenges faced by Afghan women, encompassing barriers to education, economic opportunities, and social integration. Emphasizing the necessity for comprehensive approaches, this research advocates transformative change and gender justice, stressing its urgency. Positioned within the broader discourse on women's struggles, this study aims to contribute an understanding of women's oppression with a primary focus on fostering agency and societal transformation for Afghan women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Australian Journal of Political Science is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

International development initiatives in the Global-South are often shaped by Western and Eurocentric constructions of gender, female agency and empowerment embedded in popular narratives of universal rights and white mainstream feminist ideals. Through a qualitative desk-study and documentary-analysis, this paper explores the cases of two I-NGOs: Canadian Women for Women of Afghanistan (CW4WA) and Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) to unravel how colonial discourses of gender and educational development, and homogenous and pathological notions of Muslim women are mobilised in Afghanistan to deliver various political agendas and reproduce patriarchal relations, as well as wider Global South/North divisions and entrenched inequalities. We engage with epistemic shifts. We argue that I-NGOs educational interventions take bottom-up approaches informed by local knowledges and contexts and decolonised notions of gender, power and participation, which promote and sustain a more socially just and transformative education in the developing world. We also argue that epistemic shifts are required informed by post-colonial and critical realism approaches to gender and development, both in terms of research/theory and policy formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In 2019, a migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos designed for 650 people was home to a growing population of over 5500. We aimed to quantitatively describe living conditions and health needs in the camp. Methods: A questionnaire was designed with reference to international humanitarian standards, following a consultative process with the asylum-seeker population. Domains assessed included demographics, living conditions, safety/vulnerability, and health. The questionnaire was piloted and then conducted in June 2019 on a sample of asylum seekers. Results: Five hundred participants, predominantly from Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Of these, 79.4% lived in tents. Respondents cared for a total of 570 children; 20.6% of women were pregnant, 35.4% had experienced violence, 83% psychological distress, 71% skin disease, 66% diarrhoea and vomiting, and 64% respiratory disease. Accommodation, sanitation, and nutrition fell below internationally recognised standards, and poor access to water was significantly associated (p < 0.001) with respiratory disease, diarrhoea and vomiting, skin disease ,and psychological distress. Conclusions: Living conditions in the Samos camp fall below basic humanitarian standards and are associated with poor health status. Further research is imperative to analyse and monitor the diverse, varying needs of asylum-seekers and inform policies to improve conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is one of the basic necessities of every person which is accepted by the United Nations as one of the basic rights of the individual male and female. Gender differences in educational achievementsиhave long been the focus of researches. Several studies have reported that female students outperform their male counterparts. The purpose of this study is to identify the percentage of intelligence level between male and female based on their exam score taking. The sample size estimation was created on the consecutive sampling where all cases are accessible in a given period of time. In a cross-sectional study out of a total of 610 students of the Dentistry Department of Kabul University of Medical Sciences which is one of the top public universities in Afghanistan, 278 were males and 332 females. The results of final exams of fall semester 2019 of Dentistry Department have been collected, then the percentage of each class have been calculated separately to find out which gender group is due to be among top ten students in each class. And in addition we have calculated how many students of both gender show above 80 percent. Two Sample T Test and Ms. excel were used for statistical analysis. This research showed that the numbers of Female students are more in top ten than male students in each class of Dentistry Department. We can accomplish that female students are more hardworking compared to male students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gümüshane University Electronic Journal of the Institute of Social Science / Gümüshane Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Elektronik Dergisi is the property of Gumushane University Electronic Journal of the Institute of Social Science and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article empirically explores women's lived experiences of domestic violence and conflict in Afghanistan. A thematic analysis of 20 semistructured interviews with women living in safe houses produced three main themes about the relationship between conflict and domestic violence: (a) violence from loss of patriarchal support, (b) violence from the drug trade as an economic driver, and (c) violence from conflict-related poverty. We discuss the bidirectional nature of this relationship: Not only does conflict contribute to domestic violence, but domestic violence contributes to conflict through justifying armed intervention, separating women from economic and public life, and perpetuating patriarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]