As I finish the line-edits on Section III of the new book (and find that publication date isn’t until next May, not March, my bad, I apologise), I am trying to imagine what kind of courage it takes to stand up and be seen as a woman journalist in Afghanistan - as any kind of visible professional woman in a nation whose men have become the embodiment of misogyny.
This piece, tells the story:
Three female journalists have taken the bold step of forming Afghanistan’s first Women’s Journalism Center with the aim of training female journalism graduates and helping them find media-related jobs in Herat and other nearby provinces.
Eight years ago, Herat University began offering a journalism program that included women students. But the female graduates, “about twenty a year, end up teaching in schools because of the lack of positions in local media or because of social pressure,” said Fawzia Fakhri, director of the new center. “We decided to start this center in order to encourage females who spent four years studying journalism in school.”
Being a woman journalist in Afghanistan can be extremely dangerous. Women who venture into that field routinely face harassment and threats, and have sometimes been killed. The dangers have resulted in fewer women studying to become journalists. But the new center hopes to counter this trend. It will support women journalists both by helping them find work and helping them improve as journalists, Ms. Fakhri said.
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I’ve read about this (can’t remember where). I think they weren’t even allowed to write poetry, let alone any kind of journalism or novels! They pretended to be meeting for sewing classes instead. How sad, and yet so brave of them to carry on in secret, forever fearing being discovered. I could never live in such a country; I don’t know how they do it.
Claire, you probably read The Sewing Circles of Herat by Christina Lamb.
A novel about Afghan women is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Heartbreaking, angry-making.