Towson University
Jenny Nordberg’s, The Underground Girls of Kabul: in search of the hidden resistance in Afghanistan is a collection of stories that shows the emerging resistance of gender norms placed on women and young girls in Afghanistan culture following the Taliban’s 2001 influence . Her aims at educating the readers knowledge of the cultural practice of this society brings to light the underlying issue of women being dominated in corrupt patriarchal systems. By carefully studying and interviewing these women she shows the stresses that Afghani women are born into. From birth girls and boys are put into two separate classifications. Boys …show more content…
Divorce as another means for gender violence in a sociopolitical standpoint. By Afghani women being restricted to endure treatments such as rape, violence, polygamy, limited access to education it only places woman in these social prisons that creates a constant cycle worse than the first. I found it amazing yet saddening to see that a person as educated as Dr. Fareiba would allow society ways of thinking to shape her mind into believing that women are at fault for not conceiving son. A medical professional she is oblivious to the fact that certain food and sexual positions doesn’t determine the sex of a baby rather than the actual sperm the father carries (pg.43-44). It just allows for ignorance to be promoted and passed down on a wide scale that defines these myths and cultural …show more content…
By governing women’s body without properly involving women it does nothing buy promotes bigotry and reshapes the role of masculinity and the need for women to be inferior to men. As a reader, I was engaged and my thoughts on the roles of women in Western society as well as Eastern Society was challenged ; which also made me become aware of the social expectations that was placed on me from an early age. By Identifying as Muslim I myself began to realize the pressures that was molded into my ways of thinking from an early age such as maintaining my “innocence “, finding a husband, having children and revolving my life around the need for family. Growing up I thought having those views allowed me to be discipline in my ways of thinking and allowed for me to make my father proud for him installing his views and me expressing those values with the way I carried myself. The idea that “Power has always been held by those who manage to control the origins of life by controlling women’s body”, strongly enforces the idea that women have to maintain “pure” in order to receive a husband for social justification then have to be sexual beings for the purpose of reproduction. Even in western society this is affirmed with the constant need for the debate of female contraception’s and the constant shaming of women who are perceived as being open. The