What This Rearing Leads To

*The research done and the information given is from a neighborhood unit called Mahalla in the town of Kunduz, in Northern Afghanistan.

Boy’s childhood and adolescence goes from schooling to apprenticeship. Girls however do not have a distinct separation between the two like boys do. Girls are commonly married shortly after puberty, around the ages of twelve or fourteen. Since they are expected to have children shortly after, this leaves very little time to indulge in the variety of things boys are able to do at the same age. Since girls go from staying in the house with their mothers to creating and tending to their own households, they are never given a chance to truly enter their culture in a public manner.
Shalinsky notes two major events that separate boy’s childhood from girls; circumcision and “induction into the world beyond the household.” The latter is what I would like to focus on. Since girls never go through this induction, it seems they are not as accepted into society as boys are. This major difference I believe is what brings about one of the veils many origins and uses. In a region where public space is considered primarily a male domain, I believe the veil is what makes women able to enter public space without harassment, a space that they have never been properly inducted to.
As Suzanne Brenner describes in her article, Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and “The Veil,” that: “the veil can serve women as a form of symbolic shelter that, as a portable extension of the secluded space of the home, enables them to enter public male space without being subjected to criticism or harassment” (p. 674).

This is notably different than in our culture, and possibly one of hardest aspects to understand. I believe the difficulty in an American woman’s understandings of the veil roots from the struggle we’ve been through for so many years to obtain equal rights to men. So much work is attributed to eliminating sexism; we wonder why these women are being so seemingly submissive when we are so seemingly assertive.
This is a good example of how religion is integrated into our culture. Religion requires obedience and has many expectations. After following all of these rules into our everyday life (how to dress, what and when to eat, etc.) religion just becomes incorporated into our everyday life. In a place such as Afghanistan where everyone around you and your entire family not only practice these daily rituals but expect others to as well (including wearing the veil), you are very apt to do it yourself.
Putting this in a different perspective, look at the type of clothing business women wear in the United States. Even if they would prefer to wear provocative clothing in the work place simply because they like it better, many/most choose not to simply because the there is an expectation of dress. And if women, both here and in Afghanistan, were to stray from these expectations, they would become the victims of criticism and insults.

Citations:

Shalinsky, Audrey C. "Learning Sexual Identity: Parents and Children in Northern Afghanistan." Anthropology & Education Quarterly 11(1980): 254-265.

Brenner, Suzanne. "Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and "The Veil"." American Ethnologist 23(1996): 673-697.