Journal of Research on Women and Gender Negotiating the third space in Volume 8, Pages 5-20 © Rakshinda Shah, Kim Golombisky 2017 Chitral Pakistan: Using education Reprints and Permission: Email [email protected] Texas Digital Library: to advocate women’s rights www.tdl.org Rakshinda Shah and Kim Golombisky

Abstract The purpose of this project was to record the educational experiences of college women in a part of the world where educating girls and women is not a priority and can be dangerous. The literature on girl-child education in Pakistan is thin, and few have thought to study female students or credit their perspectives as legitimate knowledge. At the same time, Ismaili Muslims in the north Chitral District value education for daughters, who today are almost universally sent to primary school. This essay interprets the oral histories of seven Ismaili women attending college in Chitral, Pakistan. We argue that the students’ accounts demonstrate indigenous third space feminism that negotiates the apparent contradictions and social invisibility of quiet activism that mimics yet changes the social order. The narrators view themselves as dutiful Muslim daughters educated in Western-style colleges where they learned to be women’s rights advocates who wish to pay forward their knowledge. Three themes resulted from analyzing the seven oral histories: (1) narrators experienced hardship to attend school; (2) narrators are grateful for their families’ sacrifices; and (3) honoring their families and communities, the narrators plan to become educators and advocates to empower girls and women as they have been empowered, and when they do return to their villages, the narrators employ careful tactics that respect local tradition while transforming it.

Keywords education, girls, oral history, Pakistan, third space feminism, women

Introduction his essay illustrates third space rights, including education for girls. As one feminism by way of the oral history narrator said: “I did not know until I was in T narratives of seven women enrolled college that according to Islamic Law, in college in remote Chitral, Pakistan. daughters should get 25% of her father’s Attending college in a society where property. Knowing about our rights will educating girls and women ranks low on a make the women in our community long list of social and political concerns, stronger economically as well as socially.” these Ismaili Muslim women plan to return We argue that the narrators inhabit Pérez’s to their villages to advocate for women’s (1999) decolonial third space where those Journal of Research on Women and Gender 6 without status or power perform social system based on the British educational change right under the noses of the legacy. In recent years, however, Pakistan dominant, privileged, and/or oppressive has seen increasingly conservative Islamic group(s) in power. The third space can be groups eschew secular education for men thought of as quiet revolution and and any education for women. Yet the ingenious practice not just for surviving seven narrators embrace the Western-style inhospitable or overtly hostile education of Pakistan’s universities as a circumstances but also for negotiating the means of helping their villages. In their tensions of invisible interstitial social desire to help others, the narrators are self- locations (Anzaldúa, 1987; Bañuelos, 2006; effacing, but they also articulate a Bhabha, 1990; Khan, 1998; Licona, 2005; consciousness of gender issues compatible Pérez, 1999; Sandoval, 1991, 2000; with feminist thought. The narrators do Villenas, 2006). The narrators’ stories can not reject their ethnicity or religion, but be understood as decolonial third space they see no reason not to question their feminism, representing organic indigenous rights as Muslim women or to advocate for practices that imitate but displace the social other women’s rights. We identify these order. tensions as evidence of the third space The seven narrators’ histories share where normative categories and binaries fail themes: (1) Narrators traveled to account for peoples’ material extraordinary distances daily to attend the circumstances and lived experiences. equivalent of primary and secondary school Indeed, the students’ stories illustrate third and, in doing so, endured hardships, from space tactics where the voiceless enact small the dangers of walking to school to corporal changes that eventually can amount to large punishment once they arrived. (2) Their social shifts (Anzaldúa, 1987; Bañuelos, families sacrificed economically and socially 2006; Bhabha, 1990; Khan, 1998; Licona, to educate the narrators. (3) Narrators 2005; Pérez, 1999; Sandoval, 1991, 2000; desired to improve the lives of women in Villenas, 2006). The fact that there is little their villages. Third space feminist practices in the literature that records the often emerge in contradictory social perspectives of Pakistani women on the contexts, such as the present case. For subject of education further illustrates these example, the narrators continue to honor women as occupying a third space “like a their families and culture while also shadow in the dark” (Pérez, 1999, p. 6). attending college away from the traditional Muslim women’s boundaries of home. The narrators remain bound by the customs of Background: Chitral Pakistan and their villages. At the same time, the narrators, because of their education, find Ismaili Muslims that they no longer fit into traditional The oral history narrators are all women’s tribal and community social roles Ismaili Muslim women from Chitral, prescribed by ethnic and religious mores. Pakistan, which lies in the northernmost As Pakistan was granted its district in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa independence from Britain in 1947, these Province between the Hindu Kush and women as college students live in a formerly Himalaya Mountains. Consisting primarily colonized country with a formal education of rugged barren mountains, Chitral Journal of Research on Women and Gender 7

District borders Afghanistan to the North nearly equal to that of boys’, despite high and Northwest. Extended winters isolate poverty and relatively conservative attitudes Chitral District from the rest of Pakistan toward women (Dawn.com, 2003). during cold-weather months as heavy snowfalls block roads. Harsh conditions and subsistence farming in Chitral District Literature Review: Universal Education make life difficult for its people who mostly live in small rural communities. This and Women’s Education in Pakistan especially affects rural women, who spend International development experts 16-18 hours a day collecting fodder, posit that increasing the rate of women’s cooking, cleaning, and caring for their education increases the economic efficiency families and the cattle (Pardhan, 2005). In and the social welfare of a country; thus, fact, six of the seven narrators are from rural investment in education is justified as an areas, and all seven attend college only efficient resource allocation and economic because they are funded by charity or rate of return (Mujahid-Mukhtar, 2008). scholarship. However, studies find that increasing The Chitrali people are all Muslims women’s education boosts women’s wages, except for the approximately 3,000 people which frequently results in women having a of the Kalash ethnic group indigenous to larger return on education investment than Pakistan (Hilton, 2009). The majority men (Schultz, 2002; World Bank, 2013). Muslim population in Chitral is Sunni, and Empirical evidence also shows that an the remaining roughly 30% is Ismaili. increase in women’s education improves Generally, the people living in southern human development outcomes such as Chitral District and Chitral Town are child survival, health, and schooling Sunni Muslims. In northern Chitral (Morrison, Raju, & Sinha, 2007). District, however, Ismaili Muslims Pakistan faces difficulties regarding represent the majority. education, in general, and women’s Ismaili Muslims, as followers of Aga education in particular. In much of Khan, value education, and educate both Pakistani society, women are regarded as genders as long as it is financially possible socially and intellectually inferior to men for them to do so (Liljegren, 2002). Aga (Sudduth, 2009). Alavi’s (1972) Khan the IV became the 49th spiritual description of the patriarchal structure in leader or Imam of the Ismaili people in Pakistani society has changed little in 40 1957. Settle (2012) writes, “Ismailis speak years: Pakistan remains a strictly patriarchal affectionately of the Aga Khan as their society, in which women are treated as savior in historic times of famine and follow 'given' or 'acquired' through arranged his guidance, which advocates capacity marriages, to spend their lives in the service building through education and enterprise” of a male dominated social system. …It is (p. 390). Over the past three decades, with not only a single patriarch, the head of a the aid of the Aga Khan Development nuclear family, but the whole male dominated kinship organization which has Network, the literacy rate among girls and a stake in the subordination of women. women has improved in Chitral District, (para. 4) especially in the north. The rate of Chitrali Attitudes towards educating girls girls’ enrollment in primary schools is and women remain mostly negative in Journal of Research on Women and Gender 8

Pakistan because communities are to read and write in languages other than concerned with preserving traditional Khowar, were more comfortable in their values, which do not include educating interactions with non-Khowar speakers. women (Khattak, 2008). Furthermore, in Although Khowar is the main language in recent years, the Taliban has been actively Chitral, there are other tribal languages and destroying girls’ schools in Pakistan (Perlez, dialects spoken in the region. Furthermore, 2011). Pakistan’s national language is Urdu, and Additionally, for decades, Pakistan English is informally recognized as the underinvested in education, and in this language of the educated class in part due environment of resource constraints, to Pakistan’s history as a British colony. government spending on girls’ education Pardhan’s participants also reported that tends to be shortchanged (Aly, 2006; the biggest barrier to gaining further Coleman, 2004; Mujahid-Mukhtar, 2008; education was social convention that Rana, 2011; Strochlic, 2013). Girls prevents them from leaving their homes comprise 75% of out-of-school children in (Pardhan, 2005). Even with literacy skills, Pakistan (Strochlic, 2013). The story in women cannot go into public spaces, such Chitral District, however, is more as the market, a place reserved for men. optimistic, in large part due to the Ismaili Educated women in the study said they people’s respect for the leadership of Aga wanted to seek employment once their Khan and the financial support of the Aga education was complete but reported that Khan Development Network. In Chitral, a they were mostly unable to do so because female literacy rate of 2.3% in 1981 rose to they are confined to their homes afterwards. 22.09% by 1998, and some gauge the Women can be educated; only through Chitrali female literacy rate today as high as primary school or all the way through 40% (Nadeem, Elahi, Hadi, & Uddin, college, but an education does not 2009). Female literacy has been calculated necessarily release them from accepting close to 100% in some Chitrali villages their traditional gender roles afterwards. among girls and women aged 20 or younger Liljegren (2002) also observed (Aga Khan Rural Support Program, 2007). positive attitudes towards women’s While international development education in Chitral. Some families said agencies emphasize the human and educating a daughter increases the bride economic development benefits of price that her parents can ask from the educating girls and women, limited groom’s family. A daughter’s increased research in Chitral suggests there are some bride price not only helps to recoup some indigenous arguments for educating girls. of the financial outlay of a daughter’s Pardhan’s (2005) data reveal that women in education but also becomes a point of Chitral’s geographic area of Booni Valley marriage negotiation between families to describe the value of education in terms of keep an educated daughter from having to language proficiency. Women in Booni do heavy agricultural labor for her who had never attended school recognized husband’s family in the likely event that that their knowledge of only their native they are farmers. language, Khowar, limited their interaction In sum, education has not been a with anyone other than Khowar speakers. priority in Pakistan due to traditional Educated women, however, with the ability tribal, social, and religious values, Journal of Research on Women and Gender 9 combined with harsh geographic and Pérez, 1999; Sandoval, 1991, 2000; economic realities, and a changing political Villenas, 2006). In this essay, we argue that climate. Nonetheless, in Chitral, Ismaili the narrators’ stories illustrate the third Muslims have materialized their value for space, which is a mostly invisible social education into higher literacy rates both for location occupied by marginalized people. women and men. In the case of women, Furthermore, we contend that the however, despite their hopes and dreams narrators’ descriptions of their own for using their education, a conservative activism are compatible with third space society keeps women bound to home and feminism, which enacts social change from family. The value of girls’ education is tied the third space. to bride price and family status. At the same One can think of the third space in time, development experts tie the value of material terms, first, as the embodied women’s education to monetizing health performative improvisation required to and home for the greater social gross survive in “borderland” circumstances, and domestic product and to improving the second, as a kind of interpretive sense health and welfare of future citizens whom making that navigates “borderland” educated women produce as offspring. existence (Anzaldúa, 1987; Bañuelos, 2006; Amid these competing arguments on behalf Khan, 1998; Licona, 2005; Pérez, 1999; of women, Pakistan in recent years has Sandoval, 1991, 2000; Villenas, 2006). witnessed increasingly narrow and violent Khan (1998) writes that the third space interpretations of Islamic law, enforcing “helps to explain how individuals negotiate even more restrictive rules for women. This the contradictions and polarities of their includes some religious groups banning lives” (p. 464). People who live in third education for women and persecuting those spaces develop tactics for maneuvering and who advocate on behalf of education for thriving in such circumstances, and these women. Indeed, this work has always been tactics “rupture” and “displace” former and remains dangerous. Moreover, we social practices and structures (Bhabha, know very little about the first-person 1990; Pérez, 1999). educational experiences of women in this Third space feminism builds on the region as few have thought to include them third space as lived experience and political in the conversation. action. Pérez (1999, p. 33) notes that “women as agents have always constructed their own spaces interstitially, within Theoretical Framework: Third Space nationalisms, nationalisms that often miss women’s subtle interventions,” and this Feminism kind of intervention is what she defines as Described in terms of Anzaldúa’s third space feminism. Pérez’s “decolonial (1987) “borderlands” and attributed to imaginary” becomes “a tool that allows us Sandoval’s (1991, 2000) U.S. Third World to uncover ‘interstitial’ and ‘rupturing’ feminism, the origins of third space politics space between the colonial and the emerge from both postcolonial critiques of postcolonial that is also the space of Western imperialism (Bhabha, 1990) and oppositional agency for women who have Chicana feminist articulations of social been erased from history” (p. 96). We argue erasure (Anzaldúa, 1987; Bañuelos, 2006; that the oral history narrators’ stories of Journal of Research on Women and Gender 10 their educational journeys illustrate third serving students attending several local space feminism where the voiceless embody colleges. The hostel is not associated with quiet revolution. any particular education institution. The matron of the hostel agreed to the project and introduced it to the residents by Method: Feminist Oral History and distributing the recruitment letter, which invited interested residents to contact the Thematic Analysis first author directly via email. Once each This essay draws on our thematic volunteer narrator formally consented in analysis of oral histories that were audio- her preferred language through the IRB- recorded via Skype interviews in 2013 and approved process, she chose her own 2014 with seven Ismaili Muslim women pseudonym. Table 1 provides basic attending college in Chitral, Pakistan. The information regarding the backgrounds of oral history project focused on collecting the seven narrators, demonstrating their first-person accounts of college women’s mostly rural backgrounds and financial educational histories. Oral history is a insecurity. All other identifiable pieces of valued feminist method for allowing people information have been disguised for without formal power to narrate their own personal security and to maintain biographies, which are then meant to confidentiality. The individual oral history become part of the historical record (Gluck interviews were one-time open-ended & Patai, 1991; Maynard & Purvis, 1994; conversations that asked about the Reinharz, 1992). In the present case, the narrators’ educational histories and purpose of the oral history project was to experiences. Each student narrator chose listen to the testimonies of women from a whether to participate in English or Urdu, part of the world where women rarely as the first author is fluent in both. express their thoughts in public forums. Although each oral history narrative Using the transcripts of the narrators’ oral is its own primary documentation, no voice histories, we first report three themes that is unmediated by the research process, emerged from the narrators’ stories. Across including the researcher’s research agenda these themes women described negotiating and the co-constructed relationship third space tensions that undermine between researcher and participant that oppositional binaries (such as dutiful emerges during the research process Muslim daughter versus college-educated (Golombisky, 2006, 2010a, 2010b; woman) to build unexpected and unique Golombisky & Holtzhausen, 2005). perspectives on social justice for women. Additionally, in the present case, given the Thus, in this essay, after we report the dangers of making the narrators’ identities transcripts’ narrative themes, we add an public, these oral histories are further additional third space feminist mediated by pseudonyms as well as interpretation to frame our explication of translation, transcription, and editing. Our the seven oral history narratives. interpretations of the narrators’ stories for The narrators were recruited by academic audiences further mediate the snowball sample from a women’s student recordings and their transcripts, which once hostel in Chitral, Pakistan; the hostel is the collected represent a historical record and, equivalent of independent student housing it is hoped, one day will become public Journal of Research on Women and Gender 11 history at a safer point in the future. As but our goal is to honor the narrators as academics, one from Chitral and one from witnesses to their own lives. the United States, we are self-conscious about interpreting the narrators’ stories,

Table 1: Description of Narrators

PSEUDONYM COLLEGE BACKGROUND AGE FUNDING YEAR SOURCE

Samina Sophomore Rural 21 Charity

Falak Junior Rural 20 Charity

Alyla Senior Town 22 Charity

Afeefa Senior Rural 25 Charity

Nabiha Senior Rural 22 Charity

Musarat Senior Rural 22 Government Scholarship

Shabana Senior Rural 23 Charity

Narrative Themes: Hardship, Sacrifice, through education, they have become aware of their rights as women, and they and Empowerment wish to share this awareness when they Narrators’ early memories of school return to their villages. described hardship due to the geographic distance between their homes and their schools, suffering in the winters, and Distance from School resentment towards corporal punishment. In South Asia, the distance between Narrators also shed light on the familial a girl’s home and the school remains one of support that they received from mothers, the reasons for low enrollment among girls sisters, fathers, and brothers. Last, when (IRIN Humanitarian News and Analysis, talking about the impact of education in 2008). In the present oral history their lives, the narrators shared that, narratives, a recurring theme was distance Journal of Research on Women and Gender 12 to school because of traveling on foot, the corporal punishment they endured regardless of weather, and encountering once they arrived, both of which left visible “social evils” along the way. Alyla described and invisible scars. Afeefa described her discomfort walking to school through wearing so many layers of clothes for the town’s marketplace: warmth that walking to school became When I was small it was fun. I used to look difficult: at all the toys and candies in the stores, but I used to take at least two to three falls by by the time I was in middle school, it the time I got to school. By the end of became very hard for me and my friends to winter, almost every year that I can recall, I walk through the bazaar as we would be ended up with an arm or leg fracture harassed with very sexual comments from [laugh]. It was not fun. In short, I hated some of the shopkeepers as well as other going to school in winters. men in the bazaar. At school, teachers were not Once she began to be harassed, Alyla told considerate of the fact that some students her mother that she did not want to go to needed time to warm up before beginning school anymore. So, at age 13, Alyla went their schoolwork. Alyla’s teachers punished to live with an uncle in another village her for not being able to write with numb where she did not have to cross a bazaar on fingers during morning classes. Samina’s the way to school. story of punishment involved firewood. Falak comes from a village where Chitrali schools often require students to there are no schools for girls after fifth “donate” one log of wood every day to fuel grade. So, she walked an hour and 45 fireplaces, although government schools minutes each day to attend a boy’s school receive funding for firewood. Samina said: in a neighboring village. The emotional toll I remember one time during winter, when was as great as the physical: I was unable to take a log of wood for the I felt as if… I was committing a crime, like classroom fireplace, I was beaten with a a theft or robbery or something. People stick five times on each hand… And to add used to stare as if I was going to school not to the humiliation, I was not allowed to be to be educated but to learn how to be an near the fire the entire day. ummm… a bad person. The worst stares Corporal punishment at school represented were from male members of my own a theme common to the narrators. Falak, family, like my uncles… My uncles even with scars on her hand and near her right came to my house to stop me from going to the school. They did not care about the eye as a result of beatings by teachers, views distance; they cared about the fact that I corporal punishment as dehumanizing: would be exposed to boys and might end We were beaten as if we were livestock. up having an affair and bring shame to the Even my mother did not use as many sticks family. on our cow to keep her within the Narrators had to contend with family boundaries of the house as much as our members who did not accept the idea of teachers used on us to “discipline us.” To this day I still do not understand why they women leaving their homes. Once a girl or could not just talk to us, why we were woman starts traveling to school, she treated like untamed animals. creates tension among kin and community. According to Society for the Protection of Getting to school without the Rights of the Child, each year 35,000 transportation was exacerbated during high school pupils in Pakistan drop out of winter. Narrators shared a loathing for the education system due to corporal going to school in the winter as well as for Journal of Research on Women and Gender 13 punishment (IRIN Humanitarian News (call to prayer) and stand on the main and Analysis, 2008). road so she could give my assignments to the drivers. Sometimes she would have to stand on the road for hours in the freezing winters just to make sure she Familial Support and Sacrifice did not miss the taxi. A family’s socioeconomic status Nabiha credits her stepmother: “She never factors into educational outcomes, and asked me to help her with the household poverty typically affects girls more chores. She always asked me to study, do negatively than boys (Chudgar & Shafiq, my homework, and excel at school.” 2004). In Pakistani culture, sons are the Nabiha recalls occasions when her aunt and ones who take care of their parents in old women from the neighborhood would tell age, so the education of sons becomes a her stepmother to make Nabiha do more retirement investment for aging parents household work. Nabiha’s stepmother (Mujahid-Mukhtar, 2008). Among the always replied, “No, I want her to make narrators, six attend college supported with something out of herself, not end up like charity funding; the seventh is funded with me, illiterate.” Nabiha said that her government scholarships. Still, the stepmother had wanted to become a narrators’ families scrimped and sacrificed teacher but never attended school. Now financially and socially to educate their Nabiha wants to become a teacher to fulfill daughters. her stepmother’s dream. All the narrators shared stories of Parental support is important for how their mothers had supported their girls’ participation in school, given educations. In Afeefa’s case, her mother traditional community beliefs that dreamed of sending her five daughters to discourage education for girls as not only a college. However, after her father waste of scarce resources but an affront to abandoned the family, Afeefa’s mother and social propriety. Shabana comes from a sisters lived in poverty. Afeefa, the oldest community where a majority of the girls daughter, tells the story of her mother’s either never go to school or leave school sacrifice: “She…sold her most prized after fifth grade. She laughs that she is the possession, her cow, so I could at least move old maid among her childhood friends. to the town and get enrolled in college.” Shabana calls her father a “hero” for Afeefa said that her mother went years supporting for her education because, she without buying herself clothes and shoes so says, the men in her village criticized him that she could pay for her daughters’ for sending her to school. “Now that I am schooling. Before Afeefa could find in college, I do not know what he goes funding, she took college courses through. He never tells me what other independently at home, which required people in the village say.” Shabana said that sending her assignments to the college, an her father is proud when she reads and 8-hour drive away: translates newspapers for him. Once he The only way to get my assignments to the cried with joy when a neighbor asked college was through the taxi drivers from Shabana to read his medication our village who make the trip to the town prescription. Shabana’s father wants her to two to three times a week. They used to leave early in the morning, and my mother work in a bank after graduation so everyone used to wake up with the morning azzan will respect her. Shabana believes she is Journal of Research on Women and Gender 14 gaining respect in her village, but it will take continue his studies at a (less prestigious) time for people to express it out loud. college in Chitral, which would cost less, In Musarat’s case, her father’s so I could attend college as well. Samina also is grateful to an older financial support for her education ended brother. When Samina was not allowed to after he was disabled in an accident. She attend school anymore after one of the girls said his first response after the accident was in her school eloped, her brother was the sorrow that he could not fulfill his promise only male family member who supported to send her to college. Musarat became Samina’s education. Samina said: determined to complete a degree and start If it was not for my brother, I do not think a career to support her family as her father my family would have ever let me rejoin supported her. “He does not understand school. Even now, he was the one who much about my course work, but still he bought me a small cell phone so we could wants to know about every course that I am keep connected and know what is going on taking,” she said. “Every time my father in each other lives, as we get to see each other only once in two or more years. calls, I am more ambitious. I am re- It is a sign of trust that Samina’s brother energized, and I work harder.” bought her a cell phone since community Siblings also supported the members generally believe that a young narrators’ schooling. After Falak’s father woman’s access to cell phones will lead to died, Falak’s sister leveraged her marriage illicit relations with men and thus impugn on behalf of Falak’s education. Her sister the family honor. refused to get married until their uncles Alyla has strong opinions about allowed Falak to continue with school. women bearing the honor of the family and Eventually, the uncles relented. Falak said: society. She says the society supports She accepted my brother-in-law’s proposal only because he was from the (local) town double standards. On one hand, people are area. She told me she did this so she might ready to punish girls to the greatest extent be able to continue with her education possible—in some cases unto death—if after marriage and, in future, I could live they dishonor their family by even talking with her and continue my school. That is to a man. On the other hand, adult men— what I did; I lived with my sister and her family for my 11th and 12th grades. She someone’s fathers, uncles, brothers— supported me. sexually harass girls walking to school. Nabiha said her older Musarat also described how the men in her brother’s sacrifice enabled her to village opposed her achieving higher attend college away from home: education, yet when those same men After high school, my father wanted to needed help with reading, it was she they send my brother to Peshawar for higher approached for assistance. Inspired by education. …Sending my brother to family members, all the narrators are eager Peshawar meant a huge burden on our to improve their families’ economic family’s finances. We knew it would be impossible for my father to afford to send circumstances and keen to raise their any other child to college. My brother communities’ consciousness regarding convinced my father that he would women’s issues, including education. Journal of Research on Women and Gender 15

Education as Empowerment the ones who will up bring our future generations.” Echoing development All the narrators see themselves as rationales about educating the mothers of empowered because of education. They all future citizens, Shabana presents herself expressed a desire to work for women’s and interacts with the people in her village rights and education, in addition to their in the way that everyone expects a young desire to have careers that afford economic woman to behave. By spending time with security for their families. Stable jobs with them, Shabana builds coalitions and income will enable the narrators to take focuses on using her knowledge to change care of their parents and younger siblings, people’s understanding and attitudes. representing a gender role reversal in Similarly, Nabiha said that she Pakistani culture. avoids imposing her education on others, Shabana wishes to earn a master’s but she always takes advantage of degree and work with an educational opportunities to talk about how women organization to educate girls in her village. benefit from education. “Education has Musarat hopes to teach after college and given me the ability to think critically,” she ultimately earn a graduate degree. Musarat said. “It is through education that today I said: “I am very well respected not only in can read and write about women’s issues.” my family but in my community as well. Nabiha also wants to work with My thoughts about any matter in my community-based organizations that extended family are respected.” Narrators support the girls’ schools in her village and described changing roles from being simply villages close by. She said, “I want to do it college students to being women’s because all the women need to be aware of education activists when they visit their their basic rights.” villages. However, the narrators said they Alyla, too, wants to be a women’s bear in mind their identities as women rights advocate and fight against from villages and try to honor their families discrimination against women. She said, and communities. “Because of my education, I have access to College has also made the narrators all the knowledge in the world.” Alyla says determined to spread the message of it disappoints her when educated men education for girls. For example, when speak against women’s rights. “I have heard Shabana visits her village, she says she some of my male teachers lecturing our avoids flaunting her education. “That is not male class fellows about not letting women going to do me any good.” Instead, she outside of her Chardar1 and Chardiwar2, matches her dress and speech to the other and it disgusts me.” girls and women in the village, which The narrators indicate that they are means speaking pure Khowar with no Urdu still bound at times by the traditions and or English which would mark her as an customs of their villages, but they are proud outsider. She says, “But I always try to when men in their families support their educate the women and men around me education. Approval from those who hold about educating their daughters, as they are the power is important. They also

1 Cloak to cover the entire body and part of the face (veil) 2 The four walls of the house Journal of Research on Women and Gender 16 acknowledge the acts of agency in tend to exclude the voices of girls and opposition to the status quo that their women. Moreover, the seven oral histories mothers perform to improve the life included stories, experiences, and feelings circumstances of their daughters. These that the narrators had never thought about daughters, because of their education, find before or shared with anyone. The narrators themselves in a borderland where they do said no one had ever asked them before, and not perfectly fit into the cultural and it had not occurred to them to reminisce on tradition-bound roles prescribed for their own. women. They cannot fully express their More than lacking privilege, but newly educated thinking in public, either. rather mostly ignored as irrelevant, They don’t reject their ethnic traditions or existence in third spaces requires religion, but they see no reason not to interpretive strategies for reconciling question their rights as Muslim women or contradictions. For example, girls walking to advocate for women’s rights. to school through the bazaar are often sexually harassed by fathers, uncles, and brothers who locate their family honor in Interpretation: The Decolonial the chastity and obedience of their own daughters, nieces, and sisters, who must Imaginary and Third Space walk through the bazaar to attend school… Interventions and so on. Villenas (2006) describes the Third space feminism, according to third space as “where political, social, and Pérez (1999), requires a “decolonial cultural dilemmas are always in the process imaginary” to get at the intangible places of being worked out even as the lessons of where women have always been more than the body, of everyday ritual, and of the mere victims, but instead “survive and spoken voice both clash and conspire” (p. persist” (pp. 6-7). The decolonial 152). imaginary as a lens reveals the invisible and Making sense of such dilemmas, as silenced, who, it turns out, are nonetheless well as surviving their material present and active, even subversive, such as consequences, is an achievement, which in the oral history narrators and their families. turn becomes a kind of pedagogy passed on Bañuelos (2006) writes, “Emma Pérez’s inter-generationally (Villenas, 2006). (1999) third space feminism is the site of Indeed, the fact of survival, while ordinary, negotiation from which marginalized is itself a form of resistance. Afeefa’s women speak and their ‘agency is enacted” mother, abandoned by her husband, as a (p. 96). single-mother in Chitral Pakistan, reared The decolonial imaginary as a and educated five daughters. Afeefa’s method, then, pries apart interstitial recognition of her mother’s strength is a spaces—third spaces—between normative sign that Afeefa has had another kind of symbolic and material categories, education from her mother about what including, for example, college-educated women can accomplish. Afeefa, combining Chitrali woman. Beyond the thinness of these lessons with her college education, academic literature on women’s education espouses an organic kind of third space in Pakistan, let alone Chitral, research and feminism addressing the specifics of the scholarship on gender issues in education society in which she lives; including the Journal of Research on Women and Gender 17 need to educate women, not only for the Over time, the results of such tactics sake of girls and women but for society as a give “rise to something different, something whole. new and unrecognizable” (Bhabha, 1990, Third space tactics may not be in p. 211.) The narrators’ stories demonstrate direct opposition to the status quo because a different kind of formerly undocumented such opposition can be dangerous; instead, third space activism and promise a hopeful third space tactics are more subtle and future for women’s justice in Northern stealthy, surviving codependent with the Chitral. Bhabha (1990) writes, “This third dominant power structure and over time space displaces the histories that constitute transforming it into something else. One it, and sets up new structures of authority, tactic Bhabha (1990) describes is new political initiatives, which are “translation,” “a way of imitating, but in a inadequately understood through received mischievous, displacing sense” (p. 210). wisdom” (p. 211). Of course, it remains to For example, Shabana performed the role be seen if the narrators, and their college of an obedient daughter when her father’s peers, can find employment outside the neighbor needed help deciphering the home, whether as teachers and education instructions for his medicine. The irony advocates or, for example, bankers. Thus, it was not lost on Shabana, but she did not will be important to continue to research eschew the opportunity to demonstrate the the educational experiences of women from value of education to her community, while this part of the world, not to mention disguised as an obedient woman using her support the causes they deem important. skill to serve men, per gender custom. Similarly, Pérez (1999) describes “doubling,” which seems to mimic the Conclusion social order’s rules while changing them. Third space feminism has been Both Musarat and Nabiha, like Shabana, described as the site of negotiation from are strategic about how they present which marginalized women engage in themselves when they interact with their practices that displace dominant ideas extended families and village neighbors; the (Bañuelos, 2006; Bhabha, 1990; Khan, narrators do their best to fit in and avoid 1998; Pérez, 1999; Sandoval, 1991, 2000; drawing attention to the fact of their Villenas, 2006). As a tool or method, the differences due to education; they mirror or decolonial imaginary reminds us to “double” tradition. However, these recognize the interstitial, where the limits of narrators also mentor their younger sisters, binaries are transcended (Pérez, 1999). The cousins, and nieces, and try to persuade decolonial imaginary also troubles Western people about the importance of education feminist perspectives and should make for girls. Shabana also described a doubling feminists uncomfortable with drawing easy tactic when she said, “I am one of them; my conclusions about women while education does not change that, but what I simultaneously obliging support for can try to change is the attitude towards indigenous women’s perspectives and girls’ education.” She embraces the existing agendas. order (“I am one of them”) as she changes In the present case, the Chitrali it (“I can try to change…the attitude women who narrated their oral histories towards girls’ education”). live in a largely isolated, rural, conservative, Journal of Research on Women and Gender 18 and religiously and tribally patriarchal Pakistan: AKRSP Pakistan Core society where many rely on subsistence Office. farming. These women also attend Alavi, H. (1972). Kinship in West Punjab Western-style colleges in the tradition of villages. Contributions to Indian their country’s colonizers. As their Sociology, 6(1), 1. transcripts show, they see nothing Aly, J. (2006). Education in Pakistan: A extraordinary about being both practicing white paper. Ministry of Education. Muslims and activists for progressive social Available from: http://www.iwraw- change on behalf of women. For example, ap.org/resources/pdf/Pakistan%20SR as Alyla said: %20(NCJP).pdf. The more I attain knowledge about Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/la women’s rights from different parts of the frontera: The new mesitiza. San world, the more I am aware of the lies and Francisco: Spinsters/Little Lute. double standards of our society. Men never tell us about our rights but will drum into Bañuelos, L. E. (2006). “Here they go again our heads that the family’s honor is with the race stuff”: Chicana dependent on us. negotiations of the graduate She combines what she learns from experience. In D. D. Bernal, C. A. “different parts of the world” with “our Elenes, F. E. Godinez, & S. Villenas society.” There are no social scripts or (Eds.), Chicana/Latina education in cultural narratives for living with these everyday life: Feminista perspectives on apparent tensions; nevertheless, the pedagogy and epistemology (pp. 95- narrators do live with them quite 112). Albany: State University of New successfully. Indeed, if third space York Press. feminism ruptures old ways of thinking, Bhabha, H. (1990). The third space. In J. then the narrators are third space feminists Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: who deploy savvy strategies that change Community, culture, difference (pp. attitudes about women and women’s 207-221). London: Lawrence & education. They accomplish this without Wishart. drawing censure (or worse) in a country Chudgar, A., & Shafiq, M. (2004). Family, where education (especially Western-style community, and educational education) is increasingly viewed with outcomes in South Asia. 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