Structural violence, girl-child abuse, and embodied agency: reading Defiant Dreams by Sola Mahfouz and Malaina Kapoor

The article examines Sola Mahfouz’s memoir Defiant Dreams: The Journey of an Afghan Girl who Risked Everything for Education (2023) through feminist discourse analysis, structural violence, religious masculinity, and embodied agency. It explores how Mahfouz’s testimony becomes a site of resistance that interweaves social relations, gendered violence, and child abuse in Afghanistan. Drawing a link between an inherently oppressive (super)structure and Mahfouz’s lived-experiences of it, the article explores three major aspects: i) Afghan women’s historical struggles against gender inequalities and structural violence, ii) the prevalence of girl-child abuse and trauma in the home and public sphere, and iii) religious laws institutionalised through gender relations to legitimise oppression and sexual control over women and girls. The conclusion comments on the importance of a systematic global intervention to promote and bring in women’s empowerment and gender equity.