Women in Wartime
By Jenny Hall
Barbara Walters of ABC TV’s “20/20” did a story on gender roles in Kabul, Afghanistan, several years before the Afghan conflict. She noted that the women customarily walked five paces behind their husbands.
She recently returned to Kabul and observed that women still walk behind their husbands. From Ms. Walters’ vantage point, despite the overthrow of the oppressive Taliban regime, the women now seem to walk even further back behind their husbands and are happy to maintain the old custom.
Ms. Walters approached one of the Afghani women and asked, “Why do you now seem happy with the old custom that you once tried so desperately to change?”
The women looked Ms. Walters straight in the eyes and without hesitation, said, "Land mines."
I recently received this story in an email as a joke, and I’ll admit that I laughed. Most cultures enjoy jokes that target the opposite sex. In reality Barbara Walters never reported such a story. On the internet it is recorded as an “urban legend,” with a history much older than the Afghanistan war. According to folklorist Barbara Mikkelson, a World War II version of the joke had British troops noting the changes in custom of an anonymous desert people where the women walked behind men and donkeys. Three years of warfare later, the order of procession was reversed, with the women at the front. The secondary status of the women appeared to have improved, but in fact had not, as they were now used to check for mines. The joke then resurfaced during the Vietnam War, and also during the Burmese conflict.
After the Gulf War, the joke maintained its focus on apparent changes in gender roles and sexist customs:
A journalist had visited the area of Kuwait many years before the Gulf War and noticed that the women walked at least ten feet behind the men, and she thought that was not right, but said nothing. After the Gulf War she went back to the same area and noticed that now the men walked ten feet behind the women. She ran up to one of the women and said, ”What a change you have brought about, how did you make the men change so that they walk behind you?“ The woman replied, ”Land mines.” [Usenet, March 1998]
The Barbara Walters version deliberately selects a renowned female journalist and newscaster as the main protagonist, someone who lends the report veracity and would be sympathetic to the secondary status of women in other cultures. It’s interesting that the latest version of this old joke portrays women in a stronger position than the previous versions. However, having visited Vietnam and seen the victims of landmines firsthand I can’t help but wonder – should we be making jokes about the victimization of women, or anyone, in war?