Afghanistan women’s sensitivity to the negative nicknames addressed by men in public

Abstract

Women are the most vulnerable part in Afghanistan whose rights are often ignored by people, specifically men. They are insulted, humiliated and treated very badly when they are in public. The study aimed to explore Afghan women’s attitudes towards negative nicknames by which they were addressed. It also investigated to find out the reasons and causes behind these negative nicknames. Moreover, the study attempted to determine other offensive nicknames by which men address women in public. The data were collected from 407 randomly recruited young women from Takhar University, schools girls, work places and learning centers where the female students were working and studying through a questionnaire which consisted of 22 items. Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to answer each questionnaire item. To analyze the data, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24.0 was used. The results of the study revealed that the participants had a strong sensitivity to their given names. They repeatedly requested men not to call them by their given names. The participants believed that they lost their identity when they were addressed by negative nicknames in public. Furthermore, the participants of the study expressed a negative feeling towards offensive nicknames which prevented them from working and studying in public. They also reported that addressing through their given names affected their lives intellectually and physically. It has also been reported that there is no any statistically significant differences in the attitudes of the participants towards negative nicknames by their gender, age, and first language.