Position of women
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10 Position of women
SUMMARY.
In many aspects, Afghan women and girls share the poor life conditions of their male counterparts. However, the NRVA 20078 conirms that a consistent pattern of relative deprivation for women exists across almost
all dimensions of individual and social development. Moreover, the gender gaps are large. This is the case in decision-making power at community level and the level of the household, where women depend
almost invariantly on their husbands, fathers or other families. Women’s position on the labour market is also particularly weak. They participate less in economic activities, for fewer hours and predominantly in
vulnerable employment. On the other hand, for those women who are currently active, the unemployment rate is as high as the male unemployment rate, and for the better educated women even twice as high.
The positive by-product of gender-based barriers to the labour market is that child labour to a lesser extent occurs among girls and less affects their development, for instance in terms of educational deprivation.
Also in the education sector large gender gaps persist. Literacy of women is less than one-third of that of men, but comparison of literacy across age groups shows an increase, and even an accelerating increase,
of female literacy, which strongly suggest recent improvements of the educational system. This is supported by the increase of girls’ – and overall – enrolment in primary education since 2005. Especially in urban
areas the NAPWA target of 70 percent enrolment of girls is within reach, and girls are closing the gap with boys. Besides education of new generations, Afghanistan has an adult population of 9.5 million people
who are illiterate – among whom 5.5 million women – who are in need of basic reading and writing skills. Reproductive health has a particular bearing on women and girls, as a high – but not exactly determined – price
is paid for high fertility, closely spaced births, early pregnancies and poor maternal health care in terms of antenatal and delivery care. In addition, the health system provides gender-speciic barriers to women because of their
restricted mobility and unresponsiveness by providing insuficient female health personnel. Despite the very low levels of maternal health care provision, the NRVA surveys suggest signiicant improvements in the last few years.
Also in terms of age at irst marriage – important with respect to pregnancy-related health risks – and spousal age differences – important for, for instance, more gender balance in household decision making –
noticeable changes can be observed. Increasingly smaller proportions of girls marry at young 18 and very young 15 ages, and the average age differences between wives and husbands has signiicantly declined.
An issue that is partly related to large spousal age gaps is the large number of widows in the country – over half a million. In the context of Afghanistan, these women, along with 70 thousand female heads of
households, can be classiied as vulnerable. In general, women could be considered vulnerable to the extent that they are not captured in surveys and censuses. Although in this respect NRVA 20078 performed
signiicantly better than the 2005 round, most probably a large number of women and girls are not reported. The general conclusion should be that huge challenges remain with respect to women’s mobility, participation
in public life, decision making, health, and access to economic and educational opportunities. The most urgent needs are found among the rural and Kuchi populations, and in line with that, gender gaps are usually
larger among these than in the urban population, with the notable exception of labour force participation and employment. But on the positive side, the NRVA suggests that signiicant improvements can be achieved in
a relatively short time span, as in the case of the education and health sectors.
10.1 Introduction
Whereas on most development indicators Afghanistan ranks at the very bottom end of the international community, the position and living conditions of Afghan women are particularly poor. The commitments of the Afghanistan government to
advance the status of women is embodied in various international legal and national policy frameworks, which include the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women CEDAW, the Constitution, Afghanistan Compact,
the ANDS Gender Strategy, and the National Action Plan for the Women of Afghanistan NAPWA Ministry of Women’s Affairs 2008. Within such frameworks, the government pays special attention to six sectors that are crucial to the overall
improvement of women’s life, namely: i security, ii legal protection and human rights, iii leadership and political participation, iv economy, work and poverty, v health, and vi education. The NRVA results in the various chapters
of this report allow insight into several of these aspects and contribute to further development and implementation of gender-sensitive development policies.
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Position of Women
The aim of the present chapter is to recapture the main findings of the report from the particular perspective of the position of women and women’s development. As a lead-up, Section 10.2 addresses the related issue of women’s involvement
in decision making. The NRVA contained several batteries of questions on household decision making that give some statistical body to gender equality and women’s empowerment. In addition, it contained a few entries on representative
bodies in communities that relate to decision making at that level. The topics of decision making in the household and community, as the primary institutions where social rules are reproduced, are addressed in Sections 10.2.1 and 10.2.2,
respectively. The summary of women’s position in the Afghan society is the specific subject of Section 10.3.
10.2 The position of women in decision making
10.2.1 Household decision making
The society of Afghanistan is characterized by a very strong gender segregation and strict rules regarding the social and physical space to move, especially for women. It is therefore interesting to see in which life domains women can
more or less freely determine outcomes in accordance with their own priorities, where they depend on others, or where they decide in consultation. Independency and dependencies may, of course, shift with life course stages, such as, for
instance, determined by marital events – marriage, engagement, becoming a widow or divorce.
The domain of sexuality is typically one where there is little gender boundary crossing. However, in related reproductive decisions, larger family and male interests may overrule the immediate interests of the women involved. With regard to
the decision to use birth control methods among ever-married women, the share of women deciding themselves is very modest, on average 8 percent. It is lowest – 3 percent – among women under 20, who are young and for whom there
may be pressing expectations to bear a child. Relatively, the largest shares of women deciding by themselves – around 9-10 percent – are found in the mid-life ages, where continuous childbearing may become more of a burden and child
spacing or termination of child bearing are desired.
Husbands who alone determine birth control is a category occurring as often as women deciding themselves in the matter. The locus of choice is more frequently situated in the marital nucleus of husband and wife or with ‘nobody’.
The latter probably indicates that family planning is not an issue of consideration. In the latter situation, indeed, non- contraceptive couples are overrepresented. Both categories alternate in terms of importance across age groups and are
each responsible for between 35 and 45 of all ‘decisions’ on family planning. In urban situations, however, the couple as joint decision maker is significantly more important and always represents well over 50 percent of decision making,
except for the age group 40-49. The influence of others is reportedly very small.
The decision for having a next child follows a similar pattern, although the woman as independent decision maker hardly exists anymore in 2 percent only. On the other hand, the influence of the husband is somewhat larger, but particularly the additional
answer that having a next child is ‘in the hands of God’ is an important category. Together with ‘nobody’ deciding on the issue, this characterizes situations where people feel that they don’t have control over reproductive outcomes, or do not want to take
control. It should be remarked that these two categories combined increase with age representing 30 to 62 percent of the decision making, whereas decision-making by the couple together decreases proportionally with age from 68 to 36 percent.
Table 10.1 summarizes who is the usual decision maker in less intimate and more common household situations. In almost all of these, the household head or father is by far the most important decision maker. This is even the case
for normal household spending, and even when it concerns items for the head’s wife. Only in typical family affairs – marriage of children, care of the elderly and somewhat less, education of children – is the representation of the head
father less overriding. It is in these domains that the wife has a relatively stronger say, although even here she hardly takes decisions entirely by herself, but usually together with her spouse. Another interesting finding is that the marriage
of children virtually always involves the head or father, frequently in consultation with the wife and in a significant minority of situations the to-be-married child itself. For marrying daughters this is the case in 16 percent of the situations and for
marrying sons in 19 percent. Monetary transactions seem largely to be outside the female domain.
The imbalance in decision making in financial matters is also clear from a series of questions on selling off selected items livestock, poultry, agricultural equipment, agricultural land, house, gold and silver, and furniture. Invariantly, when the
husband was the owner of the item, he was the only decision maker in more than 90 percent of the situations. When the wife was the owner, her exclusive decision-making power was far lower, ranging from 80 percent for selling poultry
related to typical women’s activities to only 30 percent for gold or silver. In all other cases, decision making was jointly with the spouse or by the spouse only.
