“This is the beginning of a change,” Mujtaba Arefi, one of the graduates said.
Nearly 22 graduates including 7 men, donned caps and gowns to collect their degrees, qualifying in a course that wasn’t even a reality in the largely patriarchal Afghanistan in the last decade.
Kabul University became the first higher education institute to offer a degree on gender and women’s issues, according to the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, and university officials.
Offering such a degree would have been unthinkable during the Taliban’s repressive 1996-2001 regime when female issues were taboo and women were largely confined to their homes and banned from education, AFP noted.
“This is the beginning of a change,” Mujtaba Arefi, one of the graduates told AFP.
“With these programmes we can understand the women’s place and status in our society. There is the possibility that we will reach a level of gender equality like the West,” he added.
The two-year masters course funded by South Korea and run by the UNDP focused on feminist theories, media, civil society and conflict resolution, among other women-oriented topics.
In 2015, a total of 5132 total cases of violence against women were registered in Afghanistan with 241 women killed, a 49 percent increase than 2013, according to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, or AIHRC.
Another graduate, Sajia Sediqqi, told AFP, that she hoped her classmates would use their degrees to help improve the conditions of women in Afghanistan.
“In a short period of time we cannot bring about any dramatic change, but with our higher education we can help change our society and serve our people, particularly our women,” Sediqqi said.
This article originally appeared in Telesur on November 5, 2017. Original link.
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