She The People: Women drivers in Afghanistan must brave the traffic and the stares
By Holly Kearl October 13 at 3:52 PM
Seventeen-year-old Zainab Zawol Shahidy was driving her Toyota 4Runner home from school in Kabul recently when she noticed two men in a vehicle following her. One of them pointed a gun at me and threatened me to drive along in their direction, but I refused and kept driving faster to reach home as soon as I could, she said.
She was forced to pull over when they blocked her. One of the men threw a slip of paper at her with his phone number and said if she didnt call him, he would kidnap her. She made it home and called security. Thankfully she has not seen these men since.
Although there are a growing numbers of women drivers in Kabul, the sight of Shahidy behind the wheel is still unusual. Everywhere she goes, she gets curious stares and frequent harassment, ranging from people making fun of her for driving to threats. I cant drive to places too distant from where I live due to the risk of kidnapping, she told me through the translation of her brother, Ali Shahidy, a psychology major at Norwich University in Vermont.
Despite the risk and danger, Shahidy says she loves to drive. Besides, she said, she faces more harassment when she walks or takes public transportation.
Some of Shahidys relatives believe her driving is dishonorable and will reflect poorly on them, but her immediate family strongly supports her decision, including her older brother Ali. Although the cultural norm is that elders drive, Ali rides as a passenger when he is with her because, he says, I want both men and women to see us together and to see her driving.
The more people who see women driving on streets, the more common it becomes, he said. It is changing now. One could rarely see a female driver in Kabul many years ago. But today we have more women drivers than we ever had.
Noorjahan Akbar, an activist, blogger and American University masters student, agrees. When she learned to drive in Afghanistan a few years ago, she recalls passing a group of children. One of the girls looked up and yelled in Pashtu, Look, its a girl! For many youths, seeing someone like Akbar or Shahidy behind the wheel is the first time they have seen a woman drive.
In 1992, after the communist regime was ousted in Afghanistan, women were discouraged from driving. When the Taliban came to power in 1996, women were banned from driving; the penalty was death. Once the Taliban rule ended, a trickle of women began driving. In 2002, for example, seven of the 8,698 drivers licenses issued were to women, and in 2003, Medica Mondiale, a German medical organization, began teaching women to drive. Fast forward a decade and 20 times as many women received a drivers license, 140 in 2012.
Akbar finds harassment and opposition today usually comes from re-radicalized youth who are influenced by Islamist propaganda. In contrast, the older generation who remember when women had more freedom and drove are less combative, she said.
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She The People: Women drivers in Afghanistan must brave the traffic and the stares