AFGHAN WOMEN ON THE MOVE

By Harish Velji

Afghan Women on The Move (AWOTM) is the brain child of Maryam Popal Zahid. It was founded in 2018.

Maryam said that when she was growing up, she could not reach out to the other Afghani females and in particular to any organisations.

Maryam has been an amazing success story for a refugee woman. She came to Australia as a refugee in the year 1999 at the age 20. After completing her HSC she pursued her further studies in the field of social work and community services, to follow her passion from an early age, of helping the wider community. Her studies branched into many fields of studies including Community Services, Teacher’s Aid, Health Counselling; she is currently studying a Bachelor of Arts degree in Community Development, majoring in security and counter Terrorism.

There were initial challenges for AWOTM.  “No one believed me that there was a gap and that there was no female platform in the Afghan community. Everyone said, that I am braining washing women, because I am also a domestic violence worker” Maryam said.

She further added they thought “I am taking away the religious perspective from the young girls in our community by creating women’s gatherings, where we dance, share food, laugh and shared our stories and also cried.It was first time we could collectively could share our experiences.”

Males were happy to let their daughters who were born here participate in Australian cultures and way of life. But they firmly believed that since they were born here, they would understand the Australian way of life.

However, for those who were born in Afghanistan things were different. Their partners did not want them to venture out. They were afraid that they would become less dependent on them as they would acquire a new culture which was foreign to them. In some case their partners did not even want their women to talk to their neighbors in case they learnt something “foreign”.

This was an experience that Maryam herself faced where she explained “because I am very much involved and interested in other community activities and I also attended their programs; they were very much scared of me mixing the culture and taking away the Afghan ‘manly’authoritiesaway from the family.”

It has not been plain sailing for Maryam to form this group. “By taking all the risks of being and not being ‘The Good Woman’ (it is also name of her play about the challenges she had to overcome) anymore, I stepped outand knockedon a few doors but there was still no answer from other women.  I decided to use the power of social media where I started by posting cooking shows.That way I couldget acquainted to other women,as we eat and cook similar thingsall the time, this became a common theme for the women.”

As the number of members grew, so did the conversations between the members. The conversations became more serious, some started sending messages to Maryam asking her to be the face of the group and to challenge them about the contemporary society they lived in. Slowly they started to invite other friends, people of different backgrounds and now even politicians are invited. They became brave enough to start opening up about more issues that were silently killing some families behind closed doors.

“I believe and they had also told me that they were watching me and seeing me going and meeting with other communities really got them thinking that the world is much bigger than one Afghan community. By mixing with other communities, they felt they are very much welcome compare with that to media platforms which portray negativity.