March 3, 2015
In many cases, changing minds often came down to semantics — tweaking the vocabulary around issues of gender equity and women’s empowerment. In Farsi, “gender” has a loaded sexual connotation, explained Samira Hamidi, a representative from the Afghan Women’s Network. There was, Reshteen suggested, confusion about what “gender” means in a political context — as a way of simply referring to women’s roles in society. Development goals were the vehicle through which much of the advocacy took off, consistent with Afghan priorities. So the term “gender equality” became “ social equality.”