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Afghanistan Videos: This is My City Too

April 26, 2012 By HKearl

The Afghanistan-based organization Young Women for Change celebrates its one year anniversary this week! The young women who lead the organization continue to make street harassment one of their central issues of concern (read an article by co-founder Noorjahan Akbar about her harassment experiences). Below are two new videos they produced about street harassment, with English subtitles.

They’ve conducted a 4,000 person study about street harassment in Kabul and it will be released this summer at a press conference event. This is the largest study on the topic that’s ever been conducted. If you can, please donate a few dollars to them as the funds will enable them to print women’s stories and the survey results and then hand those out to attendees and people in the streets. Most Afghans do not have computers/Internet access so print materials is the best way for Young Women for Change to spread their message.

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Filed Under: Resources, street harassment Tagged With: Afghanistan, street harassment, young women for change

Less access to public spaces for women in Afghanistan?

March 4, 2012 By HKearl

“A resolution passed by the Ulema Council of Afghanistan prohibits women from traveling without a male family member and studying, working, or communicating with strange men in the society, and it allows only men to seek divorce. The Presidential Palace, Arg, welcomed this resolution. Has Afghanistan failed its 50%?….As for as it remains a resolution it will have no binding affect. If the Ulema Council give a Fatwa then it will be binding and will have to be enforced.”

This was the Facebook status update of Noorjahan Akbar, co-founder of Young Women for Change, yesterday.

It is upsetting to see women’s rights under this kind of attack in Afghanistan. If the Ulema Council does give a Fatwa, one of the many, many negative outcomes will be an even greater restriction of access to public places for women and likely more harassment and assault should they dare go outside without a male family member.

Afghanistan is the most dangerous place for women to live in the world (Iceland the best place and Yemen the worst place) and it’s initiatives like this that make it so. A society with few rights for women and where women’s free agency is not respected fosters violence. And that is not good for women or for men.

Young Women for Change is currently fundraising to raise enough money to build and run a women-only, safe and secure Internet Cafe and meeting place. As more and more public places become restricted to women and harassment increases, this space is vital because it will allow women to connect with each other and the outside world. Donate today.

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Filed Under: News stories Tagged With: Afghanistan, young women for change

Marching in South Africa, Art Exhibit in Afghanistan

February 17, 2012 By HKearl

March protesters, via Africa Review

Here are exciting updates about activism that took place today in South Africa and Afghanistan.

South Africa: Six weeks ago, two teenagers wearing miniskirts were harassed and groped by a group of 50-60 men at a taxi rank. This was reminiscent of a sexual assault on a woman wearing a miniskirt in the same area in 2008. That attack led to a huge march. Well, the most recent bout of harassment has too.

Via BBC News:

“Hundreds of South Africans have marched in Johannesburg [today]…The organisers said they wanted to end “patriarchal views still entrenched in parts of South Africa’s society”.

South Africa has one of the world’s highest incidences of rape.

Some men, particularly from traditional and rural backgrounds, believe women should not wear revealing clothing, says the BBC’s Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg.

Minister Lulu Xingwana is going all out fighting for women's rights. PHOTO: TEBOGO LETSIE

The ruling African National Congress Women’s League said it had called the march to emphasise that women had the right wear whatever they wanted without fear of victimisation.

Several cabinet ministers and the governor of Gauteng province were amongst those taking part.

During the march, Women’s Minister Lulu Xingwana warned that she would close down the taxi rank if such harassment continued.”

It’s encouraging to see so many government officials involved, condemning the harassment. Via Mail and Guardian:

“”The scourge of women abuse threatens to erode many of the hard-earned gains of the liberation struggle. It denies women their birth rights. It condemns them to a life of fear and prevents them from being productive members of society,” said Minister of Women Lulu Xingwana.

Afghanistan: Young Women for Change (YWC) is hosting an art exhibit and poster sale today and tomorrow (2-5 p.m. each day) to raise money to create a safe, harassment-free Internet cafe for women (donate online). Many of the pieces of art and posters address the issue of street harassment in Afghanistan.

They’re also airing a new documentary on street harassment called, “This is My City too,” produced by Anita Haidary, YWC Co-founder and a film student at Mt. Holyoke College in the USA.

Via YWC - members of the group select the posters to display in the exhibition
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Filed Under: News stories Tagged With: Afghanistan, south africa, street harassment, Women's Minister Lulu Xingwana, young women for change

700 anti-violence posters pasted throughout Kabul, Afghanistan

December 26, 2011 By HKearl

These two blog entries are cross-posted with permission from the blog of Young Women for Change, a women’s rights group in Afghanistan:

Posting Our Voices on the City Walls

Friday, December 23, 2011, Young Women for Change (YWC) filled the streets of Kabul with posters about women rights messages.  It was another day of history, for the first time Kabul streets have seen women rights posters posted by Afghan men and women. We started poster advocacy from our Facebook page and website. Later, we decided to post it on the Kabul streets walls so it reaches every Afghan that crosses those streets.

I, like any other YWC member, was nervous about it, but as we moved through the city I felt stronger. It was rewarding when school students and every person on the street would read it, if they couldn’t read it, they would ask others to read it for them. After reading poster on the wall people would ask us to post posters on their cars.

I felt like my heart was going to melt down when we posted a poster and a shopkeeper who was there watching us posted it, couldn’t read it, and asked other person to read it. When he learned what the poster said, he started fixing the poster and glued it harder on the wall. Two policemen walked to the other side of the road to read our posters.

Others thought we were working for money and belonged to a foreign organization, without knowing the fact that we are an Afghan group and this project is funded by individual Afghans.  Maybe there are not to blame. We, youth, have not had much of ground level work and in the media, youth complain about what the government or others have not done instead of talking about what we can do.

The poster day was an example of how and with whom YWC wants to work. We want to reach every Afghan individually and work with them to change the stereotypes and bring the positive change to our country, ourselves. It is time we realized our responsibilities.

— By Anita Hadiary, YWC Co-Founder, 20

One Step Closer

The poster initiative began on Young Women for Change’s Facebook pages. Every week, we would post a poster about violence, street harassment or other forms of gender-based discrimination online. There would be debates on them. Many times, followers of our page would get into heated discussions with other Afghans who were favorable towards violence against women or practiced victim-blaming. The debates would reach to one hundred or more comments and tens of people would share the posters to their own Facebook pages or groups. It was striking how there were people among the so-called “educated people,” who had access to internet, and argued that it was somehow okay to beat a woman or disrespect her on the pretext of her clothing. At one point, a Kabul University student wrote, “my mother has her own place, but if my wife ever dares to disobey me, she will not be safe in my house.” Shocked, we shared the comment with others, and many women and men raised their voices to condemn it.

The amount of ignorance and misogyny we witnessed among the small percentage of people who had access to the internet and claimed to be intellectuals and educated, led us to believe in the need to do more advocacy in Kabul. To do this, we used our own money to print out posters, created some glue using ground wood and walked to the streets to post our views on the walls of Kabul city.

Today, about twenty five people, men and women, got together to glue 700 posters about violence against women and education for women on their city’s walls. Members of Young Women for Change and YWC Male Advocacy team led the initiative. A few members of other youth organizations, like Hadia and Afghan Intellectuals Network, also joined as we exited our modest office at around 11:00am. Four people had volunteered to give us their cars for transportation during the poster event. Ice was still shinning underneath our feet as we walked to the cars, divided up posters, brushes and glue among the groups and drove towards Sakhi Shrine in Karte Sakhi.

It was crowded there. Shopkeepers, laborer children who attempted to sell us gum or Bolany, a delicious Afghan dumpling, and women who had visited the shrine gathered around us as we organized and decided which areas to cover. We divided into four groups and each group hit one corner. Soon, one or two posters could be seen at the beginning of every street.

My team and I went to the front door of the shrine. We approached a shopkeeper to ask permission to post one of the posters on his wall.

– “What is this?” he asked me.

– “It is a poster about violence against women.”

– “I am against women. Don’t put this one on my walls. A man is a man. If he is angry, he beats. That is what men do. I am against this,” he said angrily.

I smiled with sadness and tried to convince him to give me permission to at-least glue the poster about education to his wall. I kept forcing myself to smile at him. My mother had warned me earlier in the day, that during the poster project I should keep my cool. “If you laugh about things, they will laugh too and eventually they will agree. If you are serious, they get angry more quickly thinking you are criticizing them,” she had said.

-“Let me study. Only one out of ten Afghan girls graduates high school,” I read the poster to him.

-“It is still about women,” he said.

– “It is about little girls. They need education otherwise our country will never be build,” I said with a smile. He shook his head reluctantly. My colleagues and I glued the poster to his wall.

Often, many we meet tell us we should do this sort of thing out of Kabul because people in Kabul are more educated and aware, but our conversations and encounters usually prove this statement wrong. Even in Kabul, the level of acceptance of a woman as an equal human is low. This encounter and many others during the day made us more confident that what we were doing is essential.

We went to Karte Char, Makrooyan, Taimani, Shahre Naw, Qalaye Fatullah and Khushal Khan Meena and we met many men and women who showed interest in our work, in addition to the ones who would oppose us. In Qalaye Fatullah, several laborer children gathered around a poster about early marriage and tried to read the poster to each other. Then, they ran over to the cars they were washing and told more kids about the posters. An old illiterate man, who polished shoes in Taimani, asked his friend to read it to him. Later, we saw him fixing the glue to save the poster from falling to the ground.

From the children who practiced reading with our posters, to older men and women who helped us and even to the men who argued with us and said that they did not want the posters, the hundreds of people we met and spoke with on Friday motivated us and gave us more energy. The reality that twenty-five Afghan women and men sacrificed their Friday, a weekend day, donated their money and resources and even endangered their safety to raise awareness among their people was another example of how Young Women for Change inspires Afghan youth to unite for creating a better Afghanistan.

– By Noorjahan Akbar, YWC Co-Founder, 20

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Filed Under: Activist Interviews, Stories, street harassment Tagged With: activism, posters, street harassment, young women for change

Snapshot of Street Harassment Stories, News, & Tweets: December 4, 2011

December 4, 2011 By HKearl

Read stories, news articles, blog posts, and tweets about street harassment from the past week.

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Street Harassment Stories:

Share your story! You can read new street harassment stories on the Web from the past week at:

Stop Street Harassment Blog

HarassMap Egypt

Resist Harassment Lebanon

Many of the Hollaback sites

In the News, on the Blogs:

* Human Rights First, “Why Egyptian Women are Mad and Marching“

* Gender Across Borders, “Piropos & the Panamanian Police: Street Harassment in the Spanish-Speaking World“

* Trust.org, “The Word on Women – Afghanistan’s Young Women – Interview with Anita Haidary“

* Lankasri News, “70% sexual harassment in public transport“

* Feminaust, “Review: Cairo 678“

* The Pixel Project, “16 Memorable Ways of Dealing With Street Harassment“

* Resisting the Milieu, “Be a Real Man: Pledge to Confront and Shame Street Harassers“

* Nothing but a Human, “Fanon, Alienation and Sexual Harassment“

* NBC News, “Using social media tools to battle sexual harassment in Egypt“

* Planet Powai, “Street play on Eve-teasing, police campaign“

* Daily Mirror, “Sexual harassment in public transport“

* Temporinteraktif, “Harassment on Transjakarta Bus Increases“

* Red Light Politics, “Anti street harassment campaigns“

* GOOD, “iHollaback Is the New Rape Whistle: Shaming Street Harassers with Cellphone Pics“

Announcements:

New:

* Through December 9th, two trucks will roam the streets of Lebanon, playing a message about sexual harassment, “Catcalls are not acceptable words to say,” and “The word is sexual harassment, fight back.”

* Read the “Men who say no to street harassment” blog post, part of Must Bol’s 16 Days blogathon.

* A high school class in NYC created a PSA about street harassment: “You’re NOT alone – street harassment”

* Noorjahan Akbar, co-founder of Young Women for Change, talks about their anti-street harassment efforts in Afghanistan

Reminders:

* Young Women for Change (Afghanistan) launched Poster in the City. All Afghan artists are encouraged to submit their art work that focuses on women’s rights, gender equality, and the elimination of violence against women. It can be in any form such as drawing, water painting, black and white charcoal drawing- or digital pictures. Full details available online.

* In India, Must Bol is running a Men Say No Blogathon for the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence

* Hollaback West Yorkshire (UK) is undertaking the first ever survey of street harassment in West Yorkshire. If you live in the area, take it by Dec. 10.

* During the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, Stop Street Harassment is featuring 16 names women do NOT want to be called by strangers on the streets. Ending the social acceptability of men calling women these names takes us one step closer to creating a culture where gender violence doesn’t happen.

* You can purchase the Stop Street Harassment book for 50% off right now!

10 Tweets from the Week:

1. kossoycj Why are you telling me that I look like your ex girlfriend and following me? I don’t know you #streetharassment

2. DiinaSalama Angered and outraged by the harassment stories told. Suffering in silence became so normal that we don’t take it seriously. #EndSH

3. SpookSquad So sick to death of rude, stalk-y, predatory behavior from guys. You were just pointless. Both of you can go F yourselves. #StreetHarassment

4. michelehumes So tired of street harassment. Started “holla-ing back” 3 years ago. At best, it does nothing. Last night it put me in danger.

5. HollaBackBmore Tired of being seen as a “thing.” When #streetharassment happens, check in w/ yr friend, empower them, not the harasser!…

6. nmoawad Hilarious, check it out. Women turn into street harassers to combat sexual harassment youtube.com/watch?v=sB-Rr8… #endSH

7. RoqayaA Ladies check out YWCA Safety Siren app. For social, health, and most importantly safety tips and a panic siren. #EndSH #harassment

8. pakinamamer Half of my life I’ve walked like a soldier or dressed conservatively enough to avoid sexual harassment on the street. But one gets tired.

9. MeganFinnegan Creepiest street catcall ever, me w/ scarf over my rain-soaked head, no umbrella: “I like the way you cover your head, sweetheart.” Really?!

10. MustBol When did you realize that street harassment exists ?

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Filed Under: hollaback, News stories, Stories, street harassment, weekly round up Tagged With: 16 days, must bol, sexual harassment, street harassment, young women for change

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