Papers by Sabrina Bilimoria
To all the strong women in the world working to overthrow the patriarchy. vi Acknowledgements Fir... more To all the strong women in the world working to overthrow the patriarchy. vi Acknowledgements First, I want to thank my parents for supporting me in all of my academic endeavors and for instilling in me the importance of education. I want to thank my father for sparking my political engagement by showing me the importance of political awareness. I want to thank my mother and grandmother for pushing patriarchal cultural norms and showing me that as a woman, I can do just as much and even more than any man. I want to thank all of the strong women in my life for continuing to show me how true that sentiment is. Thank you to all of my friends and family who have supported me through this process, especially Ani Annadata and Niyati Rangnekar for their unwavering support and constant encouragement. I want to give a special thank you to Ibrahim Ijaz for his constant help in outlining my argument and helping me articulate myself throughout the research and writing processes. A huge thank you goes to Shefali Sood and the rest of my peers in the International Studies 2017 Honors Cohort for providing constructive criticism, understanding, and support throughout this process. Most importantly, I would like to thank my advisors for helping me shape this project through countless outlines, drafts, and rewrites. Thank you to Dr. Anthony Marcum for his patience and understanding through this process and for inspiring me to develop this project in my own way. Thank you to Dr. Juan Cole for challenging me and advising me on how to develop a unique and original undergraduate thesis. I want to thank Azmat Khan and Dr. Leela Fernandes for helping me bring an intersectional feminist perspective to this work. Finally, I want to thank Dr. Kiyoteru Tsutsui for re-conceptualizing contemporary human rights discourse and law and inspiring me to challenge these institutions. I want to express my sincere gratitude to each of these academics, it has been a pleasure to work with such wise and insightful researchers. 1 Chapter 1 Lethal Patriarchy 1.1 Research Topic and Question Upon the backdrop of over forty years of political instability, Afghan women's rights have been a topic of domestic and international political discourse. Women's rights became a marker for the many different political ideologies that have taken hold within the country through years of conflict. Most recently, the U.S. used women's rights as a war cry to justify intervention and democratization in Afghanistan in 2001. This rhetoric suggested that the U.S. would end the Taliban's violent oppression of women and establish gender equality through access to healthcare, education, and economic opportunities. Scholars have debated the relative failure of the U.S. democratization effort to establish a truly democratic system (Goldstein 2012; Johnson & Piombo 2007; Lafraie 2011). Within this critique is the question of how well gender equality has been established. The 2004 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, written with the help of the U.S., enshrines gender equality and equal opportunity in education and politics for both men and women. Afghan women can now serve as members of parliament, presidential cabinet members, and in regional offices. However, gender equality remains a distant goal. Despite the goal to empower Afghan women as a whole and end the era of violence against women under the Taliban, currently an estimated "87 percent of women in Afghanistan experience physical, sexual or psychological violence during their lifetime, with 62 percent experiencing multiple forms" (UN Women 2017). The current average literacy rate for women in Afghanistan has been estimated between 17 and 32 percent (UNICEF 2016; UN Women 2017). The United Nations Children's Fund estimated that in 2015, 1 in 52 women were at risk of pregnancy related death (UNICEF 2016). While these numbers are a compelling representation
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Papers by Sabrina Bilimoria