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Women's Role in Rebuilding Afghanistan

755 views · Published 12 January 2018 · 1:18:23 · Indexed 27 September 2026

Channel: Library of Congress · 2018 · Education

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A discussion of the role of women in the rebuilding of Afghanistan, part of a three day conference in Istanbul, Turkey, on women in the global community co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. For many years, the Library of Congress has collaborated with the Fulbright program (administered by the U.S. State Department under its Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs) by briefing Fulbright scholars traveling abroad about the countries they were to visit and describing the Library's holdings in their field. 

During the three-day conference, more than 80 participants took part in 11 panels and seven discussion groups on topics such as women's roles in education, information and communication technologies, public health, economic policy, civil society, war and peace, and the political role of women. There were also four country-specific panels on Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey, which covered a variety of issues from reform of personal status laws and women in the media, to assistance to women refugees in countries that experienced prolonged periods of war. Most participants came from Muslim countries such as those represented on the country-specific panels, as well as from other nations such as Morocco, Algeria, Iran and Pakistan. 

Speaker Biography: Senzil Nawid was born in Kabul Afghanistan. She received her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Arizona in 1987. She has taught courses in history and Persian language and literature at the University of Arizona and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and New York University. The focus of her research is political, social and cultural history of Afghanistan in the 19th and 20th centuries. She is also interested in Afghan women's history and legal rights. She has conducted archival and library research in Afghanistan, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Switzerland and the United States. She has presented much of her research in national and international conferences. 

Speaker Biography: Born in Tehran, Iran, Valentine Moghadam received her higher education in Canada and the U.S. In addition to her academic career, she has been a senior research fellow at UNU/WIDER in Helsinki, Finland and a section chief at UNESCO in Paris. She is currently on the faculty of Northeastern University and has served on the faculty of Purdue University, where she directed the Women's Studies Program. Moghadam's areas of research are globalization, revolutions and social movements, transnational feminist networks, and gender, development and democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. Her current research is on prospects for a women-friendly democratization after the Arab Spring. 

Speaker Biography: Sima Wali is president and CEO of the Refugee Women in Development organization that focuses on re-integrating women living in conflict and post-conflict societies. An Afghan refugee to the United States, she is the recipient of Amnesty International's 1999 third annual Ginetta Sagan Fund Award and served as one of only three women delegates to the United Nations peace talks on Afghanistan. 

Speaker Biography: Hassina Sherjan was born in Afghanistan but grew up and was educated in the United States. A trip to Afghanistan when she was an adult inspired her to move back to her home country with two missions: The first was to educate young women through a non-profit organization she started called Aid Afghanistan for Education and a for-profit company, Boumi, that manufactures and distributes products for the home such as curtains, cushion covers, tea cozies, coasters, bedclothes and bathroom accessories. The mission of Boumi is to create jobs in Afghanistan, especially for women, based on traditional Afghani designs and using only locally-grown cotton.

 For transcript and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=8178

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