Human Security Lab: Afghans Overwhelmingly Support Women’s Rights
Newly analyzed data from Human Security Lab at UMass Amherst shows significant and sustained support for women’s human rights as a top national priority in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan - even among men and women who strongly support the Taliban.
This past year, a research team at the Lab led by Professor Charli Carpenter has been analyzing 26,000 survey responses collected in Afghanistan over a three-month period between March and June last year. They found that 66% of Afghans surveyed “agree” or “strongly agree” with the statement “I believe women’s human rights are among the top priorities for the future of my country.” The proportion of Afghans “strongly agreeing” with this statement also went up rather than down over the three months that the survey was in the field, whereas the number of people choosing more ambivalent or contradictory answers went down, say researchers.
The data provide an important counterpoint to the idea that human rights are “Western,” or that Afghans do not welcome human rights in their country, said Professor Carpenter, who unveiled preliminary findings from the project in a keynote speech at University of Notre Dame’s Keough School’s Dignity and Development Forum last week. Researchers associated with the project are presenting preliminary findings on Afghan men’s attitudes toward gender equality in the country at a UMass workshop this week.
The data is based on an NSF-funded project led by political scientists Charli Carpenter and the late UMass psychologist Bernhard Leidner, as well as UMass economist Kevin Young. Afghan men and women from all over the country answered a range of survey questions on peace, security, the economy, governance, human rights, and their vision for the future of their country.
The data was collected in collaboration with RIWI, a global survey firm that uses patented random domain intercept technology to securely captured citizen voices from high-risk contexts. This week, Human Security Lab will begin releasing the first interactive graphs from the project, visualized in Flourish. “I think it’s exciting to be working with this technology to gain insights that have never come from Afghanistan before,” said Kristina Becvar, a UMass Data Analytics graduate student who manages data and data visualizations for the project.
The research team is continuing to analyze the data, examining how Afghans themselves think about gender equality. For example, while a majority of Afghans agree that women’s rights are important, there are different views on what is most important, with more men than women saying education is a priority, and more women than men saying that the right to flee the country is a priority.
Afghans also spoke on the survey about human rights in their own words, which are being analyzed and coded by a team of undergraduate students working for Human Security Lab as part of the Political Science Department’s Undergraduate Research Engagement Program. As UREP student Tegan Oliver said, what she learned from participating on the project is that “Afghans' attitudes on gender equality are highly diverse; they are by no means a monolith.”
Of those 66% who leaned toward agreeing with the statement on women’s human rights as a top priority, 2061 Afghans explained their answer in their words when asked, “What would achieving women’s human rights look like for you?” Many of them described the specific rights that were most important to them, including education, livelihoods, political participation and “other rights” such as right to play sports. Others commented that respecting women’s rights would lead to a stronger society or emphasized an improved economy as important to women’s rights, and many spoke of the complementarity between Islam and women’s rights. Some articulated a vision of a country without Taliban rule, saying no women’s rights were possible under the Taliban, and others called explicitly for international pressure or intervention to restore women’s fundamental freedom.