Fundamentalism versus education - a word-wide women's struggle

Malala Yousufzai, shot in the head on 9 October 2012 by a Taliban gunman, is reported to be 'doing well' at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, where she was flown after the attack. Her father says that now she is recovering, she will return to Pakistan. There, her family will continue to support her in her struggle for girls' equal access to education.

A native of Pakistan's Swat Valley, Malala Yousufzai is well-known beyond her home for speaking out against the Taliban's repressive actions in denying girls and women the right to live freely and, in particular, to be educated. Her campaign against this oppression has drawn attention to Taliban actions too often resulting in atrocities and death. Consequently, her injuries – including a shattered skull and potential brain damage – have been suffered at Taliban hands. Today she stands as a victim and survivor of fundamentalism, a rallying-point for Pakistani girls seeking what should be theirs, automatically – the right to knowledge through schooling.

Now fifteen, at nine Malala Yousufzai began writing a BBC blog. Under a pseudonym she described life under the Taliban. Despite threats, her media appearances, along with her public speaking from platforms and footpaths, in the marketplace and in village centres, met with an award of a high-level civilian honour for her courage.

Her refusal to be quiet, her determination to use her brain as a thinking organ and her capacity for speech as a reason to speak out, made her a Taliban target. This had consequences for her associates and beneficiaries. The gunman's sharp-shooting resulted in injuries not only to her, but to two other girls, all travelling in a school bus on their way home from classes. Although – or because – threatened by Malala Yousufzai's voice, the Taliban is unrepentant and undeterred. Now, the Taliban vows to complete the attack by killing her. In Birmingham, police officers are patrolling outside the Queen Elizabeth Hospital to maintain her security.

Although the possibility of Malala and her family seeking refuge in the United Kingdom as asylum seekers has been raised, Mr Yousufzai rejects this, saying: 'I first laughed at [the proposition] because all of our sacrifices, my personal [sacrifices], or this attack on my daughter, cannot have such a cheap purpose that we would go to some other country and live the rest of our life there.' The Pakistan government, through Interior Minister Rehman Malik, has said Malala Yousufzai and her family will be protected upon returning to Pakistan.

In the Taliban's eyes, Malala Yousufzai is 'fair game', because she has reached puberty. Accordingly, marriage is her sole purpose and she can have no life outside the home. Marriage and patriarchal silencing are her destiny. The doors of all educational institutions must be closed to her. So, too, must all and any access to or promotion of 'Western thought'.

Pakistan is not isolated in harbouring fundamentalists targetting women and girls' right to education. RAWA – the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan – has the right to education as a central tenet. Active in setting up schools, training and employing teachers, and directing funding and other resources to ensure that as many girls and women as possible in Afghanistan access knowledge through schooling, RAWA has suffered at the hands of fundamentalists, too. In 1987, some ten years after RAWA was established 'as an independent political/social organisation of Afghan women fighting for human rights and for social justice in Afghanistan', RAWA's leader, Meena, was assassinated. RAWA reports that in Quetta, Pakistan, Afghan agents employed by the KGB shot and killed her 'in connivance with [the] fundamentalist band of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar'. Despite her death, Meena's struggle for democratic and secular values in the governance of Afghanistan continues through RAWA's work in organising and educating women. Every RAWA member and beneficiary remains in the sights of fundamentalist groups operating in the region.

Yet the West is not immune from the diktat that education and women should not mix and, where they do, violent action is necessary.

In September 2006, gunman Duane R. Morrison, 53, of Denver, 'took six [teenage] girls hostage at a Colorado high school and killed one teenager as well as himself'. He aimed a shot at the floor, told the female students to line-up, and sexually assaulted some before killing 16-year-old Emily Keyes. These young women were his target: a male student said he and other male students were 'forced … to leave the … classroom':

'"You could tell that he wanted the females … He tapped me on the shoulder and told me to leave the room. I told him, 'I don't want to leave'." This student told NBC's Today show that he "wanted to stay to give support to the girls in the classroom", but was told to go or be shot.'

One month later, four female students – bound and shackled – were killed in an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. Before tying up eleven students, shooting the four dead 'at close range' and, finally, turning the gun on himself, the shooter – in possession of three guns, a stun gun, two knives and 600 rounds of ammunition – sent the boys outside. Police Commissioner Miller said the perpetrator 'appeared to want to attack young female victims'. The seven surviving girls – 'most badly wounded' – had, together with their dead school-mates, been 'lined up along a chalkboard', ankles and wrists 'bound with wire and plastic ties'. Charles Carl Roberts, 32, a 'married father of three who drove a milk tanker truck' was identified by police as the gunman.

The United States is not alone. Canada features in the litany of attacks against female students. The 'Montreal Massacre' occurred on 6 December 1989. Fourteen women were killed at the Ecole Polytechnique in Quebec. In his suicide note, written before entering the School of Engineering armed with a Stum Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle, Marc Lepine blamed his refusal for admission to the college on 'affirmative action' policies 'promoted by feminists and their sympathisers'. His motive for the killings was expressed in this missive:

'Please note that if I am committing suicide today … it is not for economic reasons … but for political reasons. For I have decided to send Ad Petres [to the fathers] the feminists who have ruined my life … The feminists always have a talent for enraging me. They want to retain the advantages of being women … while trying to grab those of men … They are so opportunistic that they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men throughout the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can.'

Lepine attached a list of 19 women whom he intended to target, saying they had escaped through not 'fitting in' to his timeframe. The named women held non-traditional occupations, including Quebec's 'first' woman police captain and 'first' woman fire-fighter. These women 'nearly died today', wrote Lepine, however 'the lack of time (because I started too late) has allowed these radical feminists to survive'.

If more evidence is needed, upon entering a classroom where a male professor instructed 10 women and 48 men students, Lepine fired two shots into the ceiling, crying: 'I want the women. I hate feminists.' Sending the men from the room, he lined the women up against the wall, then fired upon them all, killing six and injuring the others. He continued the rampage by shooting dead women in the cafeteria, an office, and another classroom. At the final count, the dead included Genevieve Bergeron, 21; Helene Colgan, 23; Nathalie Croteau, 23; Barbara Daigneault, 22; Anne-Marie Edward, 21; Maud Haviernick, 29; Barbara Maria Klucznik, 31; Maryse Leclair, 23; Michele Richard, 21; Maryse Laganiere, 25, Anne-Marie Lemay, 22; Annie St.-Arneault, 23; Sonia Pelletier, 28; and Annie Turcotte, 21.

Some may see these events as isolated in the present, without historical precedent. Yet the denial of history is an easy way out of recognising the longevity of antagonism toward women's right to education and entry into trades and professions alongside their male counterparts.

In 1910 the Sydney Morning Herald column 'Puck's Girdle' carried the following item:

'Frenchmen have hit upon a unique method of boycotting women from the professions usually held by men. The woman lawyer is fairly firmly established in Paris, but her confreres do not mean her to remain so, for the junior members of the Bar have entered into a solemn league not to propose marriage to any lady who follows a profession which belongs by tradition to the other sex. The movement has been joined by other professional men who are afraid of competition, and seems to be formed in all seriousness …'

Puck's sense of humour prevailed, the column concluding:

'Apparently it has not occurred to these gentleman that women who are capable of entering the learned professions would hardly be likely to listen to proposals of marriage from men who so openly confess their weakness and inefficiency.'

More than half a century before, in the 1860s, Sophia Jex-Blake and six would-be fellow medical students fought through the United Kingdom legal system to be accepted as having a legitimate right to join the Edinburgh University student body. Sophia Jex-Blake had already successfully passed her first year of medicine, however, when the next half-dozen women sought to join her, the University decided it was 'no place for a woman' – much less seven of them. Finding refuge in University regulations referring to 'persons' with particular qualifications being entitled to enter, the University authorities decided that 'person' did not include 'woman', meaning the regulations precluded women's entry. The only persons in existence – according to this 'analysis' – were men.

The University Visitor – a member of the House of Lords – had earlier determined that women were within the regulations. However, when the matter went to the House of Lords on appeal, he changed his mind: sitting as a Law Lord, he joined with his fellow judges in finding neither Sophia Jex-Blake nor her six fellow-claimants were 'persons'. One of the judges said that as no woman had applied to the University before, this meant that universities were not meant to educate women. He overlooked the fact universities elsewhere – such as Bologna – had admitted women. He also avoided the fact that Sophia Jex-Blake had applied – and had been admitted one whole year before the further six applicants made their play for entry. Still, the idea that women were not 'persons' held sway, a refuge for courts and judges where women sought entry not only to university, but to professions – particularly the law.

When in 1899 Ada E. Evans applied to study law at the University of Sydney, she was allowed to enter: the spectre that she was not a person was not raised at that time. Her admission occurred, however, in the absence of the Dean, Professor Pitt Cobbett – who was overseas on sabbatical leave. Upon his return, doors slammed, chairs flew about the room and there was much banging on desks, Pitt Cobbett expostulating that Miss Evans should have been admitted to the medical faculty, a stream of study in which she (in his view) would be far better placed (she 'did not have the physique for law and would find medicine more suitable'). Nevertheless, Miss Evans remained – to successfully complete her degree, graduating in 1902. The first woman law graduate in Australia, she did not go on to practice law, for the notion that she was not a person caught up with her: the Legal Practice Act referred to 'persons' with a law degree as entitled to practice. As a woman with a law degree, this did not include her. The Bar in England excluded her, too.

Others having applied to practice at the English Bar, Gwynth Bebb came forward as a 'test case', to be told officially – by the courts – that she was a non-person. The test case, Bebb v. Law Society, was decided in 1913. Bebb had graduated from Oxford University with a 'first' in law. Eventually, with the passage of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 (UK), the United Kingdom Parliament acceded to the notion that women, like men, could practice law.

A year previously, the passage of the Women's Legal Status Act 1918 (NSW) enabled women to enter the legal profession in that state, with New South Wales being the last Australian jurisdiction to extend this right to women. This meant, however, that the 'women are not persons' notion was embedded: the Legal Practice Act having been taken to apply to men (as persons) only, required passage of an Act referring explicitly to 'women'.

Why this fundamentalism, crossing national boundaries, when it comes to women and education? Perhaps the answer lies in the revealing comment made by one of the House of Lords judges in the Sophia Jex-Blake case; that 'knowledge is power'.

For fundamentalists, power is both sexed and gendered. Hence, women and girls must remain outside the realm advancing them to knowledge. For fundamentalists, women, girls and power have no place. The shooting of Malala Yousufzai stands as another episode in the historical struggle of women against the patriarchal denial of women's right to empowerment.