Guest Post: Providing a Voice to Afghan Women

On a quiet Friday morning, as I exited the gates of the Afghan Special Operations Compound on the outskirts of Kabul, my interpreter and I set out to pick up Pashtana, the first woman DJ I hired to work at my radio station. As the three of us returned to the checkpoint, we were stopped at gunpoint. Through the yelling and gesturing, my interpreter relayed to me that the guards assumed she was a prostitute. Was it even possible that this was the guards’ only logical conclusion for her presence at their base? Sadly, it was.

After over a decade of American involvement in Afghanistan, the all too familiar plight of the Afghan woman has become an unfortunate symbol of sluggish progress made in the country. Although there are some successful efforts to advance the status of women in Afghanistan, the push toward equality cannot be too strong and the results cannot come soon enough. In the war-torn society with deep-rooted gender roles, empowering Afghan women to seize a leading role in educating their society could prove to be successful in the fight against inequality.

Photo by Tech. Sgt. Gloria Wilson

Two years ago I deployed to Afghanistan as an advisor to the Afghan Special Operation Command. I was charged with training the Afghan Commandos in operations to inform the civilian population and counter enemy propaganda, helping build trust between the civilian population and the government. In distant, hard-to-reach villages, where illiteracy is rampant, Commandos use radio stations to disseminate their message to a wider audience.

Our largest radio station, in Kabul, employed Afghan DJ's who devoted much of the programming to interviews pertaining to military operations, presenting a dominantly male perspective. It soon became clear that we were ignoring half the population. The strategy of employing women on the front lines to reach out to other women has grown in popularity over the years in Afghanistan, where men and women often live segregated lives. Thus, I sought out local Afghan women who were interested in devoting their time and, consequently, risking their lives to reach a female audience over the radio.

Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Marcus Quarterman

Through radio broadcasts, Pashtana became our link to Afghan women and, in turn, the station became Pashtana’s means for advancing the discussion of gender equality. Each week she would record commentary and interviews on location, for instance, at a women’s health clinic or a girls’ school. Then after each feature aired on Friday, she opened the phone lines to discuss topics of interest with the audience. With each broadcast we received hundreds of calls from both men and women willing to openly discuss these culturally sensitive topics. And over time, the success of her weekly shows demonstrated just how significant such communication can be in terms of enhancing the exchange of ideas and increasing our understanding of public sentiment.

I remember standing at the gate to the Afghan military compound on Pashtana’s first day. I noted how stoically she sat, unfazed by the accusations and AK-47s. We were eventually granted access and the next day I sat quietly in the Afghan Special Operations Commander’s office. He expressed his apologies to Pashtana and articulated her essential role at the radio station; and I couldn’t have been more proud as she graciously accepted, determined to assume that responsibility.


Dan McConnell is a former US Army Officer and current MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School. You can reach him for questions or comments at dan_mcconnell@hks14.harvard.edu.

Empowering Afghan Women

Whispering wind skims sides of sand dunes. A young girl, maybe eight years old, is heaving yellow plastic canisters toward a clay hut. In an Afghan village, where the gray beards make all decisions, fetching water is a girl’s duty. This is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman, but one woman – MIT Professor Fotini Christia – keeps coming back. She has interviewed war lords, studied alliances of Taliban fighters, and now she is surveying villagers to evaluate the impact of the National Solidarity Program.  

The NSP is the largest development program in Afghanistan’s history and is unusually popular. Though it is funded by the World Bank and foreign governments like any other development scheme, the Afghans own the process. Afghan government administers the NSP to 29,000 villages through a system of elected local community development councils (CDCs), which decide on infrastructure projects for their community. These councils are not the usual circles of bearded men. For a village to receive aid, half of the CDC members must be women and at least one project must be targeted to women’s needs.

What is the impact of this program on women in this male-dominated society? That is one of the parameters Professor Christia is evaluating in a randomized field experiment. Because the program could not be delivered to all villages at once, she was able to select 250 villages for the treatment group and 250 similar villages for the control group. Her team of dedicated enumerators trekked to these remote villages to survey and interview residents in 2007, before projects commenced, then in 2009, and finally in 2011 when the projects were completed. The final evaluation results are not yet available, but Professor Christia shared some preliminary findings.

The most hopeful results were in relation to attitudes toward women’s civic participation, socialization and economic activity. Namely, in villages that received the NSP both men and women were more likely to say that women should have input on electing the village head and that there is at least one woman in the community who is well respected by both men and women. These villagers were also less likely to say that women should not have any decision-making roles. Moreover, women in the treatment villages were more likely to have become engaged in an income-generating activity, and to have developed support networks with each other. On the family attitude front, however, no statistically significant differences were observed with regard to women owning assets or being consulted about family spending decisions.

Changing entrenched gender roles is difficult enough at Harvard and MIT, not to mention a conservative village in the heart of a country ravaged by civil war.With that in mind, Professor Christia makes a compelling case that the NSP and the ongoing participation of women in local decisions is critical to moving Afghanistan forward. For instance, in selecting infrastructure projects for their communities, women were more likely than men to invest in wells and schools. Perhaps with a shorter distance to haul water, their daughters will be more likely to go to school.

Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.