Academic literature on the topic 'Sexual harassment of women – Afghanistan – Kabul'

Abstract Although sexual harassment is a worldwide phenomenon, the contemporary case of sexual harassment in Egypt is noteworthy, as the nation only recently occupied a top position on the map of sexual harassment on a world scale. In November 2013, Egypt was declared by the Thomson Reuters Foundation as the worst country for women to live in within the Arab World when compared to twenty-two other Arab countries, largely as a result of its female sexual harassment rates.1 Similarly, and on a more international scale, the United Nations Population Fund declared Egypt as ranking “second in the world after Afghanistan in terms of this issue.”2 In the years following the 2011 revolution, the nature of sexual harassment in Egyptian society greatly evolved, as it transformed from a hidden phenomenon to an overtly prevalent social epidemic. This study presents the “weaponization” of sexual harassment as a common ground where class struggles, state policies, and women’s empowerment intertwine in post-revolutionary Egyptian society. It argues that the phenomenon was partially produced by an ongoing class struggle, manipulatively reproduced by the state, and strategically resisted by women for different yet interrelated reasons.

Military sexual trauma (MST) can cause mental and physical illness in both men and women. It can also influence behavior and the ability to work with others. MST encompasses a range of unwanted sexual attentions ranging from gender harassment to sexual coercion and gang rape. Sexual assaults in the military continue to rise with an 11% increase reported for fiscal year 2009, including a 16% rise in the Afghanistan and Iraq war zones. This paper includes (a) a brief overview of MST; (b) how MST affects female veterans; (c) how MST affects male veterans; (d) the interrelationship of MST, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health problems; (e) MST and its effect on quality of life; (j) current effective MST therapeutic treatments; and (g) rehabilitation considerations.

Women began reporting on war in the mid-nineteenth century, covering, among other wars, Europeans revolutions and the US Civil War. The numbers of women reporting on war increased over the twentieth century with the First and Second World Wars and especially the Vietnam War. This increased again more recently, when many news organizations needed journalists in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Nonetheless, war reporting remains widely regarded as men’s domain. It remains a highly sexist domain. Women war reporters continue to face condescension, pseudo-protectionism, disdain, lewdness, and hostility from their bosses, rivals, military brass, and the public. They also experience sexual violence, although they are discouraged from complaining about assaults, so that they can keep working. This research focuses on the sexism and sexual harassment facing contemporary women war reporters, with particular attention to Lara Logan, whose career demonstrates many of these highly gendered tensions.

Background: Women veterans may be at high risk for intimate partner violence (IPV), which increases susceptibility for negative physical and mental health. IPV experiences and use have not previously been studied among the newest generation of women veterans who deployed to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Method: This study examined the correlates of IPV in a sample of 102 women veterans who had deployed to the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan and who were in current intimate relationships. Using an anonymous web-based survey, participants completed measures of combat and sexual harassment exposure during deployment, measures of mental health and substance abuse, intimate relationship satisfaction, and recent IPV. Results: Results indicated that 63% of the sample reported experiencing any IPV in the past 6 months, whereas 73% reported using IPV toward their partner in the past 6 months. Linear regressions indicated intimate relationship satisfaction explained significant variance in recent psychological IPV, whereas alcohol misuse and recent psychological IPV experiences explained significant variance in physical IPV experiences and use and sexual IPV experiences. Conclusion: Women veterans in this study reported high levels of recent IPV experiences as well as the use of IPV. Results suggest the need to assess for both IPV use and IPV experiences in medical settings, and that for some women veterans, IPV prevention that focuses on healthy relationship functioning may be beneficial.

Prior research on the relationship between veterans’ mental health and psychosocial functioning has primarily relied on male samples. Here, we investigated prospective longitudinal relationships between mental health and psychosocial functioning in 554 female Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans who were surveyed three times between two- and seven-years following separation from service. Mixed effects modeling revealed that increasing depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) severity predicted declines in work functioning. Increasing PTSD severity predicted declining parental functioning and worsening depression predicted a decline in relationship functioning. In turn, decreased work and intimate relationship functioning predicted increased PTSD and depression symptom severity suggesting bi-directional effects between mental health and psychosocial functioning. An examination of the effect of deployment stressors on psychosocial functioning revealed that deployment sexual harassment was the strongest predictor of decreased psychosocial functioning across all domains. Evidence for the reciprocal nature of relationships between mental health and psychosocial functioning underscore the need for treatment targeted at PTSD and depression, as well as work and relationship functioning to improve outcomes for women veterans.

Mass media (Radio, TV, print…) plays a crucial and vital role in information distribution and thus in the political market and public policy making. Theory predicts that information provided by mass media reflects the media’s incentives to provide news to different types of groups in society, and affects these groups’ influence in policy-making. The study emphasize on the role of mass media in political markets and its effect on public policy-making. It attempts to develop a theoretical relationship between mass media and public policy. The empirical studies have tried to assess the effect of media on policy outcomes. Analysing various cases in Afghanistan, media influences policy makers and higher authorities to act in accordance of the suggestion and recommendations of media workers and institutions. In recent decades, policy makers have considered on media’s soft and proper demands based on their suggestions and recommendations, even many articles in Afghanistan’s constitution would be amended. According to our findings, ‘Access to Information Law’, passed by president Ashraf Ghani, was a combine demand of policy makers, lawyers and media workers, who believed that legal information except the information that can harm national security should be accessible by locals and media workers through law. Similarly, Afghan Journalist safety committee developed a comprehensive policy against women Sexual harassment that will be discussed in the paper as a ‘Case Study’. Hence, the policy has been accepted by Government of Afghanistan and is implemented since then

Mass media (Radio, TV, print…) plays a crucial and vital role in information distribution and thus in the political market and public policy making. Theory predicts that information provided by mass media reflects the media’s incentives to provide news to different types of groups in society, and affects these groups’ influence in policy-making. The study emphasize on the role of mass media in political markets and its effect on public policy-making. It attempts to develop a theoretical relationship between mass media and public policy. The empirical studies have tried to assess the effect of media on policy outcomes. Analysing various cases in Afghanistan, media influences policy makers and higher authorities to act in accordance of the suggestion and recommendations of media workers and institutions. In recent decades, policy makers have considered on media’s soft and proper demands based on their suggestions and recommendations, even many articles in Afghanistan’s constitution would be amended. According to our findings, ‘Access to Information Law’, passed by president Ashraf Ghani, was a combine demand of policy makers, lawyers and media workers, who believed that legal information except the information that can harm national security should be accessible by locals and media workers through law. Similarly, Afghan Journalist safety committee developed a comprehensive policy against women Sexual harassment that will be discussed in the paper as a ‘Case Study’. Hence, the policy has been accepted by Government of Afghanistan and is implemented since then.

Racism is rooted from colonial era that the colonizer considers their race that is different and higher than others. It produces social inequality between colonizer and their colonized. The Kite Runner depicts the story of life in Afghanistan in the middle of the tribal conflicts and war; Hazaras, the minority ethnic group genocide done by the Pashtun, the majority, children and women rapes, and civilians slaughter by Taliban. In the middle of the war, live two main characters, Amir and Hassan, ten years old boys who come from different social class yet living in the same roof. They both have the same father without their knowing, but with different mix of race. Different race and social class results in discriminative acts not just between the two of them but also among society. This research aims to analyze and find out how The Kite Runner depicts the racism in Afghanistn during 1970s up to 2001. Pashtun Taliban represented by Assef as the villain vs Pashtun, Amir as the main character. Pashtun vs Hazara is also known by the characters; Assef with Hassan, Amir and Hassan, Assef and Sohrab, Baba and Ali, Baba and Sanaubar. This research uses descriptive analytical method. This analysis is focusing on five aspects of racism, namely (1) discrimination, (2) segregation, (3) slavery, (4) prejudice, and (5) stereotype. It can be found that the discrimination is done by Amir and his Father, Baba who treat Hassan and Ali, who are from minority ethnic, as their slaves. Next is segregation and discrimination depicted by Assef, a young Afghanistan who praises Hitler and assumes that his ethnic is more decorous than others in Afghanistan and he tries to chase Hazara from Afghanistan. The slavery can be seen when Baba and Amir treats Ali and Hassan as their maid in their house. The prejudice can be seen when there are some Pashtun thinks of the hazrasa existence living together with Baba and Amir. From Prejudice, it results the stereotyping from other people of imagining the Hazara. The authoritarian government, Taliban, also show the mistreatment of racism to the Afghans. Afghans often get sexual harassment, being raped, or even being killed if the break the law of Taliban.

The robust history of women’s rights in Afghanistan is rarely analyzed in academic accounts of Muslim feminism. In this chapter, I trace the positioning of a particular Khana-yi aman in Kabul within the broader institutional framework of feminism and Islam in Afghanistan. The Khana-yi aman, often translated as a “shelter” or “home of peace”, is a form of safe-house in Afghanistan instituted to host women undergoing criminal trials for sexual transgressions or moral misconducts. The ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2010-2012 at the Kabul Khana-yi aman illustrates the precarious life histories of the women who administer and inhabit the Khana-yi aman, and how unfamiliar and dangerous forms of sexual expressions may be rendered culturally and Islamically intelligible through everyday social maneuvers. The Khana-yi aman is forcing the Afghan state to account for its failures and confront its peripheries, and in doing so it dislocates the question of how to maintain order in orderless societies, to an emphasis on failure, disintegration, and anarchy as constitutive of any state project.