Women Builders Defy Prejudices

Thursday, 3 March, 2005

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Hassina Suliman

Bigum may be a grandmother of six, but that has not stopped her throwing off her burqa to join a road construction gang in Kabul.

Despite a bowed back, the 75-year-old was forced to seek work after her only son was injured in an accident - yet she is proud of being given the opportunity to contribute to the reconstruction effort.

“We will construct our destroyed country with our own hands,” she pledged, as she went about her job of cleaning the road prior to it being tarred in the searing midday heat.

Like all the pioneering women taking part in the German-funded municipal project, Bigum must also bear the taunts of people unused to seeing females busy with manual labour - women had been banned from taking jobs outside the home under the former Taleban regime.

Back in the 1960s there were females working as engineers in Kabul but none doing construction work - still an unusual sight nearly anywhere in the world today.

“At first we were humiliated a lot and made fun of with people crossing the road teasing us,” said Rabia, who is one of two women to have learned to drive the rolling machine.

“We were called different names, but we did not heed such words.”

Rabia does not mind admitting that it is a hard job - with people sometimes becoming sick amid the high temperatures and fumes - but says she keeps going by thinking of her disabled husband and four sons.

“I have two goals: to provide something for the life of my family and to promote the independence of Afghan women.”

Altogether, there are now 18 women in three, six-person gangs working across the capital in tandem with 40 male colleagues.

Their employment was first suggested by the German backers of the city road construction project and then taken up enthusiastically by the women’s affairs unit of the Kabul municipality, which selected them from among the city’s street cleaners.

The road-building project is expected to last between one and two years.

Working from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon, each woman then takes home around 100 US dollars a month – just over three times the average salary.

The high pay is what attracted Bigum away from her previous jobs in chocolate and quilt-making factories.

Burqas were discarded by the female construction workers early on after German advisers said they were dangerous and inefficient.

They must still, however, protect themselves from stares, as well as dust and fumes, often working clad in long robes with veils wrapped tightly across their faces.

After years of civil war in Afghanistan, they must also contend with dead bodies and mines uncovered during construction work.

Though the wisps of smoke from the boiling tar as it hits the road burn the eyes, Bibi Gul, a widow with six children, appreciates the chance to work, “The black tar is a blue river in front of our eyes, and every day after the work we feel happier.”

Rabia, who has been ignoring the stares of passers-by as she pushes around carts of sand, takes her place behind the rolling machine under the direction of a male engineer.

It presents an unusual picture of workplace cooperation between the sexes – with the women impressing their male colleagues.

One of the supervisors called Mahfooz, who has been training the women for six months, told IWPR, “I would say that their physical ability to do the work is equal to the men.”

Akber Alam, an 80-year-old man who still does some light work after 30 years of employment on the roads, is also enthusiastic.

“The work of women is a positive initiative instead of them begging on the road,” he said. “We see men passing on this road and they say, ‘If we had power we would remove these women from the machines.’ But everyone just gets on with their job.”

The women, meanwhile, are just pleased that they are able to work on such an important project. “During the Taleban I hoped to walk on the road under the blue sky of Kabul,” said one, “and now I have the responsibility of constructing [it]!”

Haseena Suliman is an independent journalist in Kabul.