The pendulum of gender politics in Afghanistan

Maliha Zulfacar

Central Asian Survey, 2006, vol. 25, issue 1-2, 27-59

Abstract: In the 1920s women appeared in French style attire on the streets. In the 1930s, women were prohibited to appear unveiled. In the 1950s, to appear unveiled became a choice and education was co-ed. In the 1960s and 1970s, some women worked with men, drove cars and sported mini-skirts. In the 1980s, some women danced in clubs, some worked in factories and the dowry was outlawed. In the 1990s, women were forced to take refuge in the veil from rival ethnic attacks. Thousands of women were abused and raped. For their ‘protection’, in the late 1990s, the Taliban outlawed the public appearance of women and prohibited them from participation in every aspect of public life. In 2003, female students again may appear unveiled on the university campus, but remain veiled out of campus for security concerns. Over all of these years, gender policies have swung like a pendulum, oscillating between the moderate and the extreme. Furthermore, all of the above were taking place in Kabul only—other conditions prevailed elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02634930600903007 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ccasxx:v:25:y:2006:i:1-2:p:27-59

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ccas20

DOI: 10.1080/02634930600903007

Access Statistics for this article

Central Asian Survey is currently edited by Raphael Jacquet

More articles in Central Asian Survey from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().