Paper long abstract:

Afghan women comprise of more than fifty percent of Afghanistan's population, yet the bureaucratic agencies, and ministries, such as MUDL, remain male-dominated, which translates into public policy decisions that construe women's invisibility in public spaces. The case study of the MUDL's activities, which examines projects in the city of Kabul, demonstrate that, due to the lack of women in positions of power, cities are being rebuild through application paradigm that results in the exclusion of women from public arenas. Afghan men perceive themselves as those in charge of shielding their mothers, daughters, and wives from conflict, in a society that finds itself in a seemingly constant "state of nature". This dynamic whereby men see themselves as the protectors of women increases the chances that women will be sidelined both when it comes to their presence as decision makers in the public bureaucracy and to the public policies that would ensure their presence in the public spaces. Understanding the role Afghan men play to withstand the application paradigms that continues women's invisibility in public spaces is significant when aiming to untangle the mess produced by the prolonged war within a co-habitat space during the re-construction. This is done by approaching the topic of inclusive space for Afghan women in the public sphere with an international feminist lens that seeks to understand how spatial design is deeply intertwined with issues of gender, power, religion, sexuality and kinship within the society and household. To understand the shift in power dynamics as women's rights in Afghanistan evolve, and how the Ministry of Urban Development and Land negotiates and engages with the changed circumstances in the spatial design.

KEYWORDS: Geopolitics, power, space, gender, politics, war, Afghanistan, Afghan women, descriptive representative, religion, state of nature

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the women rights in Afghanistan after the fall of America in August 2021.The basic rights of Women are confiscated by the Taliban regime and their survival is at risk in this Islamic state. The basic argument in this paper is Afghan women are stuck between the abuse of the Taliban state and action of the international community which is pushing Afghan government to minimised the desperation of the Afghan women. Taliban government is depriving women from jobs in education sector. Workplaces are segregated and even what kind of mobile phones women must use if they are working declared by the organisations. I argued that Afghan government is hiding the actual situation in Afghanistan by circulation the fake news on international media that women can continue their jobs and continue their educational activities in a usual manner in Afghanistan. Women are becoming virtual prisoners in their homes and Taliban is taking basic rights of the half of its population (Women). The reports of human rights watch, the interviews of human rights activities are the source data of argument in this paper. The interviews of 7 Afghan common women who are facing problems in their daily life and interviews of 3 working women provides the picture of insecurities in general and workplaces in particular . This paper is also based on information of the Newspapers and digital media. In the end the efforts of NGO funded by international community will also highlight.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how secondary school students in Kazakhstan learn masculinities and femininities in and out of school and how do they resist dominant discourses of gender. Data analysed comprise participatory activity and focus group discussions with eighty students selected from grade 7 & 8.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how young people learn masculinities and femininities in and out of school in post-Socialist Kazakhstan. Post-socialist societies have undergone profound shifts over the last three decades, but young people’s voices and gendered lives in post-socialist contexts remain under-represented in childhood studies. The young people participating in this study are schooled in a context of significant educational reforms borrowed from the West. They live in a paradoxical context in which gender equality is enshrined in the constitution, but nation-building projects employ re-traditionalised discourses of gender. Despite universal access to schooling and a higher representation of women at the tertiary level, widening multi-sectoral gaps exist at the expense of women. The paper draws on poststructuralist and postcolonial insights to understand how schools, families, and peer groups shape young Kazakhstanis’ construction of being a female and male and how youth narratives are linked to the political, economic, social and educational contexts of their existence. An ethnographically informed qualitative design was used comprising a participatory activity and focus group discussions. Eighty young people, 40 girls and 40 boys, aged 13-15 from grades 7 and 8, were selected from six schools, three in the south (Almaty) and three in the north of Kazakhstan (Pavlodar). Participating schools were selected purposefully to help understand the ways gender intersected with regional/local norms, medium of instruction and rural vs urban location. The analysis focuses on: how do young people construct masculinities and femininities in school in relation to the curriculum, disciplinary regimes, teacher practices, and peer culture?; in what ways do their gendered performances after school shape their sense of being male and female?; what are the long-term implications of their gendered experiences on their imagined futures?; and how do young people exercise agency to resist dominant discourses of gender circulating at the local/global levels. School learning resources and print, electronic and social media impacted youth identity formation in gendered ways. Both girls and boys reflected on their gendered lives at school and outside school. Young people drew on essentialised notions of gender to normalise these differences. Cultural discourses were used to rationalise the gender order.

Nevertheless, some girls and a few boys resisted essentialised notions of gender and culture by drawing on constitutional rights and equality discourses. Greater resistance was articulated by students in Russian medium schools and those in the Pavlodar. The educational implications of the findings are discussed.