Education as an Empowerment Tool for Afghan Women

Sammanfattning: This thesis explored how highly educated women in Afghanistan relate to the multiple challenges affronting women’s education, and what they see as possible pathways forward. It raised questions about the women's lived experiences, their motivations and positionings, as well as their readings of the situation and perspectives on the cause. The study is based on ten in-depth interviews with women in Central, Northern, and Northwest metropolitan areas. These women are highly educated, politically inclined, often obstinately feminist women, and are active in Afghanistan. The analysis draws upon feminist ethnographic theory and debates, especially concerning women’s agency and empowerment in highly patriarchal contexts. Earlier research on the various challenges to women’s education in Afghanistan has tended to focus on the oppressive character of the socio-cultural sphere, with emphasis on religion. My thesis offered new evidence and insights by introducing the understudied perspective of the insiders and drew attention to the importance of some micro spaces of emancipation for women, which in some cases can be family and peer support networks. These spaces were crucial to the women’s agency and empowerment, and their ability to complete their higher education.