The Role Of Women In The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner is centered around the male’s role in Afghan society. There is an absence of input from woman, which reinforces the lack of women's rights. There may be very limited representation of women in the novel, however woman play a vital role to Hosseini’s novel. The role of women in the novel are to show women are shifting from their culture's traditions and creating a new social norm for themselves, fighting for equality and creating a balance within the society.

In the beginning of the novel Amir, the protagonist, talks about his family. Amir was raised by his single father due to his mother passing away. Amir recalls his deceased mother’s profession of being a humanities professor at an Afghan university. …show more content…
While attempting to visit her child, Lailia is beaten within an inch of her life as an aftereffect of traveling outside the home without a male escort. The beaten Lailia took demonstrates the senseless and unjustifiable lengths men would go to handicap woman from equality. Throughout the novel Hosseini exhibits how gender roles affect almost all characters. Soraya brings exposure to the treatment woman receive from Afghan men and speaks out about the level of inequality between the two genders.At one point in the novel, Soraya had spoken to Amir about the inequality in the form of double standards. Double standards meaning a rule or principle that is unfairly applied in different ways to different people or groups."Their sons go out to nightclubs looking for meat and get their girlfriends pregnant, they have kids out of wedlock and no one says a goddamn thing. Oh, they're just men having fun! I make one mistake and suddenly everyone is talking nang and namoos, and I have to have my face rubbed in it for the rest of my life (Hosseini, 13.188).” What Sorya is trying to vindicate through this quote is men can go out to clubs and sleep around with plenty of woman without people thinking of them as floozies. On the other hand woman cannot sleep with their long term boyfriends without being viewed as whores.This is upsetting to Soraya because she just believes overall all its unfair. IF roles were reversed in the situation she was in she would had not had to of her reputation is ruining. Sanaubar and Baba’s relationship would fit into this double standard as well.Speaking of Baba, Amir knows his father is known for being a powerful and hardworking man. Within the entire novel not a single woman was categorized in this manner. Amir said “Prison tongues would flap. And she would not bear the brunt of that prison, not me- I was