telephone) and appear in public unmolested with
make-up and minimal compliance with the dress
code, setting examples for others. In Afghanistan
girls still learn that only the veil, strict segregation,
and home mean safety and propriety, and are pun-
ished for transgressions by women and men.
Males older than nine may claim authority over
females. In all social strata this creates power strug-
gles between sisters and younger brothers who
demand compliance but whom sisters still see as the
wards they had been as toddlers. Girls come to
expect brothers to be more restrictive than fathers
and more likely to be violent. Public improprieties
will bring punishment because they suggest a girl’s
poor management by father or brothers and thus
diminish the men’s honor. In Afghanistan women
may use men’s fear of losing control over their
women to subvert male authority, but girls learn
through their stories that this is dangerous.
Obedience requires the instillment of respectful
fear (tars) in children. Girls, taken to be more com-
pliant than boys, develop respect mostly through
admonition, scolding, and intimidation while for
boys additional harsh threats and beatings are
deemed necessary in most traditional families. Girls
witness aggression among male relatives, toward
women and themselves, and come to see it as a lam-
entable fact of life. Staying close to home, girls have
unparalleled intelligence abilities and functions and
thus are suspected especially by their brothers of
possessing secret knowledge. Lacking authority,
they learn to exert power by manipulating people
and knowledge and through dissimulation, at the
price of being called untrustworthy. Most learn to
see that they are the property and wards of men
(especially in Afghanistan) and that their position is
one of servitude, that their restricted access to
important things from money and inheritance to
religious rituals is immutable, and to regard their
marital future as fate beyond their control. De-
pression among women and girls is high in both
countries and discussed widely in Iran.
Formal education reaches most children in Iran,
while in Afghanistan it is unavailable to most, espe-
cially to girls. The Iranian government pushes girls’
education to meet women’s needs in the Islamic
society; this led to a surge of women into education.
In the sex segregated schools female students do
not defer to males but compete among themselves,
which benefits their self esteem. Middle-class girls
are encouraged to emulate professional women.
Even young rural and low-class women now see
education as an alternative to early marriage and
large families, however unrealistic it is for most.
In Afghanistan religion was used to rationalize200 gender socialization
banning girls from all schooling and is still used to
justify the transmission to girls of traditional, pre-
modern patterns of life for women in all classes and
regions, including the notion that marriage, mother-
hood, and dependency form the only God-ordained,
reasonable female existence. Child betrothal and
early marriage of girls are still practiced widely in
Afghanistan while even in rural Iran most girls now
expect a say in marriage arrangements. Polygyny,
divorce, and the sorry fate of “fallen” women are
popular themes in the media and among women
everywhere. Although relatively rare (especially in
Iran), polygyny and divorce are a source of power
for men and of anxiety for women, and this is com-
municated to children and produces fear of loss of
mother.
Girls learn skills, outlook on life, and patterns of
behavior, thinking, and feeling by observing men
and imitating women. They rehearse infant care
and chores along with the expression of affect and
pain, elicitation of support and pity, supplication
of saints, and resistance (for example, dodging
demands). Teasing and lying as tools of control lead
to general distrust, but experience also teaches girls
to feel safe with their mother and female relatives
(especially in Iran). They also learn that compe-
tence leads to confidence and that support of males,
even to the detriment of women, gains approval.
Yet, everywhere girls also come to realize that
“good” (self effacing, compliant) women are less
successful as persons, mothers, and wives than
those who earn money and are vocal, manipulative,
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