The Rocket

Issue date: 11/16/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Beth Henry Farooka Gauhari, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, spoke Tuesday in the Strain Behavioral Science Building about how women are treated in Islamic societies. Gauhari showed the audience artifacts from Afghanistan along with personal stories.

An Afghan woman visited Slippery Rock University to share stories and facts about how women in Islamic societies are treated compared to women in American society.

Farooka Gauhari, a professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, spoke at SRU Tuesday in the Strain Behavioral Science Building auditorium about her memoirs, "Searching for Saleem: An Afghan Woman's Odyssey."

Gauhari said that the best way to help an Afghan woman is to give her a job, because a lot of Afghan women are not allowed to get an education.

Michele Fenstermacher, 19, an exercise science major said, "Afghan women are disrespected in the sense that they are not allowed to show their faces in public, as if they are an outcast, whereas American women can freely walk the streets wearing anything they want."

Afghan women were reduced from wearing close to anything they wanted in the 1970s, Gauhari said.

American women are also seen only for how they look and what they are wearing, said Jodiann Solito, director of the Women's Center.

American women are not viewed all that differently, Solito said, because they are also usually reduced to their reproductive abilities.

"Women today don't get equal opportunities (like) their male counterparts," criminal justice major Jared Rogers, 19, said, "due to the fact that the women's predominant role in society is (being) caring child-bearers, and employment to mothers is harder in this patriarchal society."

Afghan women are not to walk in the streets without a male companion, who is usually a family member, Gauhari said.

American women, though they have a voice and can walk alone, have to be careful not to step out of the role women were taught, Alex McNeill, a 21-year-old political science major, said. A woman is taught to be submissive, seen and not heard, but if a woman is any other way, she is thought of as rude, annoying, and improper, McNeill said.

"I don't think women appreciate the freedoms they do have here because they're too afraid to express them; they just might be labeled a feminist," secondary education English major Amy Barch, 22, said.

Women have found ways to recognize their roles, regardless of the society in which they find themselves.

"Regardless of your race, religion, heritage or income, we are all women, and that is something that all women can relate to. I think that when women all over the world are still treated as second-class citizens, we need to unite with our similarities and learn about our differences," McNeill said.

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