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Afghan Women’s Secret Facebook


Afghanistan--FILE PHOTO. An Afghan woman browses the Facebook website on a computer at the Young Women For Change Internet cafe in Kabul in July 2012
Afghanistan--FILE PHOTO. An Afghan woman browses the Facebook website on a computer at the Young Women For Change Internet cafe in Kabul in July 2012

Frustrated by taboos in their country around women expressing themselves online, some Afghan women have formed a private Facebook group that’s making waves.

Heard It From Her Episode 2: Afghan Women’s Secret Facebook
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Malali Bashir, correspondent with RFE/RL's Afghan Service.
Malali Bashir, correspondent with RFE/RL's Afghan Service.

This month on Heard It From Her, we spoke with Malali Bashir, a journalist with RFE/RL’s Afghan Service. Named a Twitter Power User at the 2015 Afghan Social Media Summit, Malali is one of the most visible journalists on Afghan social media, but she needed a better way to engage with Afghan women online, where an opinion expressed by a woman can result in a barrage of bullying, harassment, or even blackmail.

So she created a private Facebook group for approved members called “Bandar,” or “The Get Together,” where Afghan women have been discussing everything from access to education to street harassment. Their frank discussions regularly make it out of the group and into traditional media when journalist group members report them, and people in rural Afghanistan without access to the Internet can join the conversation. But there has also been a backlash in traditional media, with some men denouncing the group as “unwomanly.”

--Emily Thompson

About This Podcast

Heard It From Her is a conversation with a woman in media with a story to tell. Each month we’ll speak with a journalist from RFE/RL or other independent media in our broadcast region to talk about her reporting, the issues she confronts, and the political, societal, and cultural context in which she works. For more on women in media, follow Lady Liberty on Facebook and Twitter.

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