Sonali Kolhatkar
Women’s liberation is a concept that has become widely touted though rarely applied. Men have promised us liberation to justify war, capitalist exploitation, and other forms of degradation. Instead of liberation, we have been delivered oppression. It is past time for women-led movements to reclaim the concept of liberation and continue the on-going struggle for women’s rights.
Women’s liberation, like racial justice, is something that most people today claims to espouse, respect, and aim for. It is not polite to publicly advocate women’s oppression anymore, just as it is not polite to be openly racist. Men, and those with privilege and power, will speak about respecting women’s rights and the need for women’s liberation without actually taking steps to achieve it. This is true of George W Bush or the Taliban. But if Bush and the Taliban can claim to respect women’s rights we are in trouble. We cannot rely on men and people in power to free women. It is simply not in their interests to do so. Would the rich give up their wealth because they felt sorry for the poor? Why would men give up their own power even if they believed women deserved freedom?
To reclaim women’s liberation, we need to first define it.
Liberation is freedom from the powers that oppress us. To achieve liberation, we must take back our power to ensure our wellbeing. Most broadly, women’s liberation must include power over our bodies and power over our minds
Power over our bodies means freedom from rape, freedom to live free of physical ailments, freedom to have or not to have children, freedom to dress, freedom to assemble with one another, freedom to travel from place to place, freedom to live in a place of our choosing, freedom from rape, and freedom to simply say ‘no’ to men. This is not a complete list but I think it includes the most important aspects of what we as women want.
How do women take back the power over their bodies? I want to look at examples in Afghanistan during most of this talk, partly because it is my area of expertise, and partly because Afghan women’s oppression became an international focus only a few years ago.
Because Afghanistan has always been a conservative nation, women have never fully enjoyed the freedoms I listed earlier. But, in the 1970s, women’s activism and the solidarity of some well-meaning men in power, resulted in significant improvements, particularly in the cities. Rape, starvation, lack of health care, maternal mortality, dress restrictions, etc, were not epidemics as they were under the Taliban and as they are today. But the actions of the world’s two superpowers changed all that starting in the late 1970s. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent occupation, along with the near simultaneous fueling of fundamentalism by the United States, turned back the clock on women’s liberation in Afghanistan.
The Soviets used the language of women’s liberation when they invaded, pushing through reforms intended to benefit women while at the same time disappearing and killing thousands of women and men who disagreed with the little matter of imperialist occupation of their country. Meanwhile, the US poured billions of dollars into the pockets of extremist, misogynist, fundamentalist Mujahadeen, who claimed to want to save Afghan women from the Soviet reforms. Using the promise of liberation, both superpowers instead delivered oppression.
The US government then continued the destruction of women’s rights through the early 1990s into a state of near-total oppression through the on-going funding of the extremist Mujahadeen. The period of 1992-1996, after the Soviet withdrawal, was the worst period for Afghan women - a time when they lost almost all power over their bodies under the rule of the US-backed fundamentalists. Women were raped, forced to marry warlords, committed suicide out of desperation, were forced to cover their entire bodies, were denied healthcare, and much more.
After 9-11, the Bush White House continued the legacy begun by Presidents Carter and Reagan by empowering the misogynist Northern Alliance (former Mujahadeen) to retake power in Afghanistan in the name of women’s liberation. Today Afghan women continue to struggle for their rights under this new US-delivered version of “liberation.” This new era involves more of the same: lack of health care, increased sexual violence, and fundamentalist laws.
Here in the United States, we see the impact of misogynist fundamentalism on our rights primarily in the last 7-8 years. This includes not just the withering away of women’s right to abortion, but in general, the effects of a worsening healthcare crisis that forces women (and men) to have to choose between good health and bankruptcy. This also includes the prevalence of a rape culture and the “pornification” of our culture (as expressed by writer Pamela Paul), which gives greater license to men to objectify women’s bodies, to hire women’s bodies, to degrade women, to batter women, and of course, to rape women. Additionally women, primarily women of color, are being imprisoned in greater numbers in the United States than before.
So, in many ways, the power over our bodies that we have fought for over the years, has regressed both internationally, and to varying degrees, domestically.
What about the power over our minds? This most simply translates into access to education and the satisfaction of our intellectual needs. Access to education empowers us to fight for our rights. Throughout the world, the more educated girls and women are, the more advanced that society is with respect to women’s rights.
Again Afghanistan is a good example. Before the Soviet invasion, women and girls in Afghan cities were able to attend schools and universities, while women in rural areas had very little access to education. Consequently, Afghan women enjoyed greater rights in cities than in villages. Today, of the few hundred schools left, dozens have been burned down by fundamentalists and many have shut down out of fear. The more women are deprived of education, the more entrenched their oppression.
Women also need freedom to travel in order to have access to education. Even in countries where there are many schools for women, as in Iraq, women are de-facto denied education because of the terrible insecurity in US-occupied Iraq. Walking to school is a life-risking act that can result in kidnapping, rape, and/or death. As a result fewer Iraqi girls and women are attending schools. This phenomenon, in combination with the rise of fundamentalism in Iraq is extremely dangerous - we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Iraqi women’s freedoms. Like Afghan women, Iraqi women were promised liberation, and instead delivered oppression.
But it’s not just war that destroys the power we have over our bodies and minds. In many countries, particularly in the Global South, neo-liberal economic policies ravage young girls and women, forcing them into factories and farms to earn money to keep their families alive. As a result, they are prevented from attending school or higher education – particularly in countries like China, India, and Indonesia, where the clothes on our backs, the shoes on our feet, and the electronic gadgets in our pockets are produced. Neo-liberal economics offered women in poor nations liberation, and instead delivered oppression.
So how do we take back the power over our bodies and our minds? We need men’s solidarity, but we cannot rely on men to give us back the power they have taken. Men’s solidarity can only strengthen our movements to regain power, but they cannot be a substitute.
To regain and strengthen the power over our bodies and minds, we need forms of secondary power. We need in particular political power, economic power, and the power to influence public opinion.
Political power can be gained through the electoral system, as well as through grassroots political resistance. Generally both are needed to affect change. Women must occupy positions of power in elected bodies, in equal numbers to men, if not greater, in order to champion women’s rights on a political level. But women must also be at the forefront of resistance movements on the ground to not only support feminist representatives in office, but also to hold all elected officials accountable.
In Afghanistan women are struggling for both kinds of political power but are constantly threatened with death and rape. Malalai Joya, the youngest member of the Afghan parliament was popularly elected on the basis of her outspoken critique of warlords. She is equally loved by her people and reviled by the warlords. For her courage she has been rewarded with death threats, threats of rape, physically assaulted on the floor of the Parliament, and needs constant security. But her words have given a measure of hope to her people, who see her as breaking a grim silence on past war crimes.
Afghan women are also struggling for political power through grassroots struggle. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), with whom I do solidarity work, has been on the forefront of women’s rights struggles since 1977. Using a combination of traditional and electronic media, public demonstrations, political statements, and humanitarian projects, they call for democracy, secular government, women’s rights and human rights. Powerful fundamentalist opposition has forced them underground – RAWA’s founder Meena was assassinated by Mujahadeen forces, and RAWA members currently use pseudonyms and change their residence frequently. Still, RAWA continues their brave struggle for women’s rights, supporting elected officials like Malalai Joya and denouncing warlord parliamentarians.
Aside from political power, economic power for women is crucial. We need money to feed ourselves and our children, to stave off wage slavery, to afford decent housing, and more. But historically women have always been paid less for doing the same, or even more work than men. Women slog on farms, in factories, in offices, as janitors, as maids, nannies, in call-centers, and in almost all employment sectors. On average women are still paid less today than men for doing the same jobs. And just because a few women may make it to positions of economic power does not mean the playing field is level. Nothing short of complete economic equality is acceptable for women’s liberation.
In Afghanistan, despite the Bush administration’s promise of liberation, almost nothing has been done to enable women to have economic power. The token projects that exist involve incorporating women into a market based economy that is exploitative. Women have little to no access to jobs in cities and villages. If they are extremely lucky, some women may be able to get a job as a hair dresser in Kabul or Herat. Unless Afghan women have economic power, how are they expected to live from day to day, feed themselves and their children, afford decent shelter?
RAWA’s approach to economic power is simple, practical, and empowering. Their “income-generation” projects teach women a variety of skills such as embroidery, sewing, chicken farming, goat farming, etc. Raw materials are provided free of charge (rather than as loans) and RAWA helps their trainees sell their products, which in turn ensures them a sum of money to buy more raw materials and hopefully earn a living. The projects are designed not to leave women trapped in a cycle of debt, rather to economically empower them. If the Bush administration was truly interested in Afghan women’s liberation, such projects could be funded on a vast scale rather than as token show-case projects.
Finally, women need the power to influence public opinion in order to liberate themselves. In my years as a journalist, the one thing that strikes me constantly is the shocking dearth of women’s voices in the media. The media is an extremely powerful force that influences all of us, from the way we dress, to the music we listen to, to the political opinions we have. If the media was not so important, corporations would not hire expensive public relations firms to push products that we do not need. The US military would not hire public relations firms to sell war and other destructive policies to the public.
Among the plethora of voices we hear on the airwaves and see in newspapers, how often to we hear women’s voices and read women’s words? Look in any major newspaper today such as the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, etc, and count the number of women op-ed writers versus men. Or count the number of women experts interviewed on NPR versus men. You will find a disparity that exposes a deep bias against women and toward men.
Of course there are plenty of women’s bodies in the media - usually headless ones, or bodies with heads that all look alike. Just look at any magazine rack and you’ll notice that both women’s and men’s magazines flaunt near-naked bodies of women. But what does that tell the public? It tells us that women’s bodies are available for men to consume, and that other women better follow along and make themselves available as well.
If women are shut out of the media, women’s liberation does not become a public priority. Just as we fight for the power over our bodies and minds, we must fight for the right to speak to the public.
Women cannot be complacent about our rights. And men must not continue to enjoy their privilege in the face of women’s oppression. Together, women and men, in this, the most powerful country in the world, must work hard, with women in the lead, to regain our power here, and to fight in solidarity with the women abroad whose power has been stripped by the actions of our government.
