Oppressed, Empowered, Compatriot Woman: RAWA's Online Construction of Gendered Ideographs

In this paper, I define the ideograph and explain its central role in the strategic communication of two very different entities invested in the advancement of women' sights in Afghanistan: the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), an Afghan feminist organization, and the Bush Administration, during the early years of the war in Afghanistan. I employ the rhetorical conceptions of Lloyd Bitzer (1966) and Richard Vatz (1999) to explore the Bush Administration's and RAWA's intentions by analyzing textual and visual ideographs in the context of the rhetorical situation. In its mission and goals, RAWA repeatedly champions women as vital partners in nation-building and rejects occupation by foreign military forces. Despite this, RAWA continues to represent Afghan women online as powerless, voiceless, and dependent on the external assistance that only American intervention can provide. The contradiction undermines RAWA's long-term objectives for secular democracy, women's rights, and national liberation. Bush and RAWA both rely heavily on the ideograph —a textual or visual invocation of the Afghan woman as a faceless, voiceless victim—in order to create emotional appeals directed to American donors. RAWA uses as a short-term humanitarian strategy to raise funds. Other ideographs use reinforce the ideology of &oppressed woman& to gain American sympathy and therefore fund RAWA's short-term humanitarian initiatives. Introducing , an alternative ideograph of Afghan women that can be used in conjunction with its current humanitarian appeals—one in which they are politically active, equal to men, and co-shapers of their homes and communities— does more to promote RAWA's long-term goals. However, deeply rooted cultural suspicions against RAWA's association with the West make introducing &compatriot woman& an unadvisable task for RAWA. Rather, its cultivation in mainstream Afghan society would allow it to build the shared cultural meaning it needs to reach the status of an ideograph. Only then could RAWA use this culturally recognizable representation of Afghan women to balance the rhetoric on its Web site and corroborate the claims it makes there in terms of the organization's long-term goals.