Marriage and Women’s Rights: China vs Afghanistan

In my ED 227 class yesterday my class was fortunate enough to have a guest speaker who grew up in Afghanistan to speak with us about his childhood, and how society worked in Afghanistan especially regarding women and religion. He told us that when he grew up in Afghanistan women did not have really any rights to do anything besides be in the home taking care of the house, their children, and their husband. He told us that at the age of 9 years old, girls can begin to be married to much older men, always in arranged marriages. He told us that there was great disparity between men and women both in society and in their religion of Islam, but the essential argument we got from him is that women did not have any rights in Afghanistan, they were seen more as objects than women, or even people. He told us that it is extremely common to see teenage girls, even as young as 9 years old being married to men in their 30’s.

If we compare this to China we see that even though things are certainly not perfect for women in China from the examples that we’ve seen throughout our readings, they are certainly not quite like the conditions for women in Afghanistan. Yes, China does have a great deal of arranged marriages, but they are not marrying young girls to grown adult men. Chinese women are allowed to go out in public and wear clothes that they desire, but in Afghanistan women need to be accompanied by men in public and always need to be wearing their hijab in public.

The great disparity between the treatment and rights of women between China and Afghanistan is really shocking to me and I feel that sharing it on the blog will give good perspective between some of the culture differences between China and a nation in the Middle East.