Private Initiative As A Means For Liberation
The Importance of the Private Sector in Women’s Liberation in Afghanistan
Sometime this week, as I was scrolling through the algorithm-provided suggestions on YouTube — lately they’ve been quite disappointing, at least for me — I came across a video that caught my attention. From the French media channel ‘Komune’, which mostly posts content on immigration and diversity topics, the video’s title is ‘I chose to cover my body because I feel more comfortable’. It’s basically a podcast interview led by Sara with Behishta, a young Afghan currently studying at HEC Paris, who saw her life turn upside down with the Taliban takeover of the Afghan government in 2021.
Even though it looks like the conversation is going to be centred on the choice of wearing a hijab — exactly what initially drew me in — the title is a clickbait referencing what seems to be the hot topic in France, when in reality, 99% of the conversation is based on Behishta’s journey fleeing Afghanistan.
I kept listening because I was positively surprised by Behishta’s eloquence and curious to see if perhaps I would learn about a new bizarre Taliban punishment to add to my folder of weird, out-of-the-box facts that I tend to unfortunately share when I’m drunk in safe spaces. All jokes aside, she began to describe her life in Kabul. ‘I think it was quite similar to what I do today,’ she said. She studied, and then she worked. She had friends, and then she married. Pretty standard. When asked if she was experiencing a ‘great’ life in Kabul in those years before the Taliban takeover, she said, ‘I was part of a young team, and everyone was so ambitious about their future, their personal plans, but also our work in the private sector.’
Bells started to ring in my head because this wasn’t the first but the second time she had mentioned the ‘private sector’. Curious choice of words, I thought. Most of us would probably just say that we work for a company or that we belong to a group of friends that is very ambitious about our careers. Unless, of course, there is such a great divide between what is public and what is private that we won’t use the word ‘company’ — which can, in so many cases, be owned partly by the government or funded by taxpayer money — and instead specify that we work in a place run by individuals acting/deciding independently of any government agenda.
This is truly the key, I think. Governments have the power to pass laws to enforce their agenda. If a company breaks a law, it will most likely face some sort of punishment or fine. But if there isn’t a law prohibiting something — let’s imagine, for the sake of this situation, prohibiting women from entering the labour force — it might be the case that this agenda is still, to a certain degree, enforced in the public sphere. If the ministers or cabinet elected are not generally in favor of women entering the labour force, they’ll probably just hire men in most cases to work as government officials, leaving most women out.
But, unless you live in North Korea, there’s always some space for private initiative — for people to set up their own companies providing a product or service that fulfils a need in a certain regional market. Most importantly, business owners can do what they want until they break the law. If these business owners, company recruiters, teams, etc., don’t have any problem hiring women, then they’ll hire women. Most of the time, we’re so obsessed with what companies are doing wrong that we forget their social utility in pushing the boundaries of government agendas, which the great majority of the time do not represent the people’s ‘agenda’.
Pause a goddamn second and truly think: when was the last time you felt a government was 100% aligned with your beliefs and vision? Not hard to guess — never. That’s simply an impossibility. Now pause a second time to reflect on your privilege. The privilege you have to live in a country where your misalignment with the government’s agenda does not ever (or at least, most likely) represent a threat to your existence, your freedom, or your subsistence.
Don’t get me wrong, many politicians’ stances on race, sexuality, and immigration create societal pressure and may normalize behaviours that have a huge impact on some lives. This is truly horrific — to be discriminated against over something you are and have no control over, or even that you choose to be. Heil to people’s activism that has made my life a free, bubbled heaven to live in. But let’s all agree that Afghan women’s prohibition from studying and working, and the perverse selection of barbaric, deadly punishments they face, are on a different level. And even if nothing compares to the dark ages the Taliban forces their current population to live in, we can’t also say the previous regime was a liberal promised land.
Behishta’s life was truly great — I am in no way, shape, or form taking away her own words — but it was mainly made great because the regime allowed for the freedom of private initiative to do what perhaps they weren’t the best at enforcing (probably because of religious, tribal, or external pressures — this is another article on its own): giving woman more freedom of choice. Obviously, the scope of this liberation was quite small. Kabul is the capital city, and there wasn’t suddenly a great ‘private sector’ able to employ rural Pashtun girls from the mountainous region of Afghanistan. But the usage of this term reveals a deeper story about the government’s huge weight over individuals’ lives.
Bells ring once more as Behishta says, ‘I was kind of traumatised by the collapse of the government and everything that happened to us and the country.’ The truth is, who wouldn’t be traumatised by a bunch of misogynistic extremists taking over the place you belong? Yet, this is staggering to hear. I paused for a second and realised that I am from a country full of corrupt politicians and collapsed governments, and yet I can say with certainty that I have never been traumatised by any of them. It is, to a certain degree, mind-boggling how what’s practically a rotation of jobs can have such a big impact on people’s freedoms. Probably because the space the government holds in each citizen’s life and the reach it has on changing how we would normally, unbotheredly behave is so significant. And if Afghanistan is at one extreme, where does Portugal lie in the spectrum of restricted freedoms — or more straightforwardly, citizens’ changed behaviours — due to government actions?
We can all agree that the more extreme the impositions are, and the more blatantly we have to circumvent them, the easier it is to spot them. But what if these impositions are small? What if they’re so small they come in the form of subtle microaggressions, discretely changing our behaviours in such a minuscule way that it’s hard for us to spot them? What if we live an entire conformed lifetime without ever spotting them? Almost like you’re coming home after work and sitting on your sofa every day, knowing it’s not very comfortable, but over time you find ways to make it more so. You put one leg up and the other at a certain angle. You face the TV more from the right and set up your arm to better support your back, and now, yes, it feels nice. You spend all evening contorting, and then contorting again, and you do that every single day after work. And then you die, never realising that all that time you could have just been seated still if only you had understood your sofa was a crooked mess and all you needed to do was buy a new one. But you never saw a brand new sofa — so you never knew.
I can hear you right away thinking, ‘Yes, Ines, duh, that’s why we vote for governments! So that I can throw away the one that is batshit crazy, completely misaligned with my views, and give power to the one that is closer to them.’ To that, I would firstly congratulate you on the faith you put in a certain elected party to behave exactly as they said they would. I wish I had that faith in humanity. Secondly, I would ask you if the country you’re voting for is just populated by a homogeneous mass of people. What actually happens is that this misalignment each one of us has with the way the elected government runs things varies, and varies a lot because the countries we live in are (fortunately!) increasingly diverse while all our voices and opinions are equally valid. I mean, that’s the way most political parties’ strategy works — making you believe the opinions of others are less valid, picking on any spottable differences. If you’re on the right, it’s because the ‘Others’ are immigrants, from different races, from a very different culture, or have (magic words) different values. If you’re on the left, it’s probably because the ‘Others’ are less educated, less empathetic with the most vulnerable, labour exploiters, etc. You might confuse this scenario with a high school recess full of hormonal, desperate teenagers clinging to any opportunity for differentiation. But don’t be mistaken, this is the political debate today — desperate voting groups seeking validation for doing the ‘Good’, pointing fingers at the ‘Others’ who are less valid, conjuring simplistic solutions to complex problems nobody has a grasp on. All of them think they’re so different, yet they’re doing exactly the same thing.
Let’s go back to common ground: we are all entitled to our equally valid different opinions, we live in diverse countries, and we know this misalignment with the current government varies. Wouldn’t it make sense to reduce the reach of the government’s impositions on individual lives to a minimum so that fellow citizens with equally valid different opinions are less impacted and leave the greatest possible space for private initiative as a way to freely organize ourselves? Maybe I’m dangerously close to suggesting anarchism, or worse, I’m dangerously close to someone calling me an anarcho-capitalist. We should get back to Behishta’s interview.
We can go straight to the third time Behishta mentions the ‘private sector’. This time she’s talking about pools, or the lack thereof, for women. ‘We had swimming pools in big cities, for example, in Kabul, for women. And, of course, it was allowed [to swim] because we had the pool, but it was private,’ she said. So all public pools were solely reserved for men, and the only one in which women could publicly bathe was private. If I didn’t want women to go to a pool, I would have loved that the public offer of pools was only for males. It would make me a pretty miserable human being, but I would have loved knowing that all my taxes would go to enforcing something I believe in. In this case, thank the lord for the greedy, profit-seeking capitalists who don’t happen to have any problem with women learning how to swim.
Now let’s take this innocent irony to a whole new level, let’s spice up this Saturday! Let’s imagine that a country’s government backed a more progressive-friendly idea, like cinema — ah, such a noble art. I love watching films; my favorite director is Ingmar Bergman, and I loved Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, which, at first sight, puts me right into that group of pseudo-intellectual cinephiles that you probably try to avoid at all costs, and rightfully so. It would make sense that I would love my country’s initiative to heavily invest in locally produced cinema. It’s a way less divisive topic because its access wouldn’t be discriminated against according to gender and, after all, it’s under the umbrella of the most magic word of all: culture. Loving cinema and supporting public funding for my country’s cinema sector would sound great because I’m simply supporting culture — and who doesn’t want to support culture! Unless, of course, there are a million different kinds of ‘culture.’
If you are a ‘cultured’ privileged little brat like I probably am, then you may have just hit the jackpot — most of the time, your preferences are valid! Now, if your ‘kind’ of culture is to go to club nights where ex-Big Brother contestants are paid thousands to say a couple of lines, you’re in bad luck — you’ll still have to pay taxes, which will then be used to fund things you won’t ever have the remotest interest in. In this case, thank the lord for the greedy club and cable TV owners who provide 24/7 reality TV content that you actually like to watch. Ironies aside, it’s not hard to understand that what these business owners are doing is providing a service or product that some people want to consume — yes, the same people you share a country with, who have equally valid opinions as you!
To wrap things up: there’s a social utility in allowing space for economic activity led by individuals who identify gaps in the supply and demand of certain things, be it in culture or in any sector that leaves an entire gender of consumers out. Pushing for governments that seemingly have the same values may not always be the best way to ensure peaceful living in highly diverse countries, as it may greatly restrict the freedom of equally valid citizens, and unnecessarily so, as there may be space to satisfy opposing preferences through a greater free market. But hey, who am I to say anything! I know I left so many things unexplained, and this might altogether be an endless discussion, but let this interview be a reminder that nowadays some of us might be putting a lot of faith in centralised institutions to solve issues that would be far more effectively solved by private-led initiatives.
