Giving Thanks

This year, as every year, I am thankful for many things: my family, my friends, my health. I am thankful that I have internet access to be able to keep in touch with my family and friends. I am thankful for the new friends - the family - I have made here. I am thankful for the Fulbright Program, and the many people at the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe who are so supportive.  I am thankful that I can mostly do what I want. I am thankful for the opportunity to be in Tajikistan.

Being here also reminds me to be thankful for many things that I take for granted in the United States:  an education system that teaches to standards and requires hard work; a democracy that holds contested elections, as ours reminded me; and cultural structures that value women as equals to men. Today I want to dwell on how thankful I am for my rights as a woman.

I am thankful that my parents always encouraged me. In everything. I am thankful that they expected me to go to school and to go to college. I am thankful that my teachers and community encouraged me to play sports and participate in every activity as well as my male peers. I am thankful that I still have my parents' support as I figure out what is next.

"When do you plan to get married?" a Tajik male asked me. I have no plan, I told him. It depends on when I meet someone who I think I want to marry. "When do your parents want you to get married?" he persisted. My parents have almost no say in the matter, I told him, to his surprise. I am so thankful that my husband will be my choice: both who and when. 

When and if I marry, I am thankful that my husband and I will not have to live with his family if we do not want to. I am thankful that we will share cooking and cleaning duties. I am thankful that I will not ask my husband permission to travel, and that he will be supportive of me working. I am thankful that I have the education to understand my legal rights should he not treat me well. I am thankful that my family would not be disappointed if I gave birth to a daughter.

Not everything is perfect for women in America; we have plenty of recent news and politics to show us that. More subtly, our assumptions are not always so different from those here. Americans also obsess over dating and marriage. The time scale is different - "If he hasn't been married by 45, something must be wrong with him," an American acquaintance remarked the other day - but people still think you should marry. And there are spheres that are almost exclusively male. "Even in America it is not common for women to be boxers?" a Tajik friend asked, surprised, when borrowing Million Dollar Baby. No, I said, not at all; it is a men's world. [A Tajik woman won a bronze medal in boxing in the Olympics this summer. This fall she got married and announced that she is taking a year off from the sport.]

But though not all is equal in America, there are people trying to change that. In Congress or on the editorial pages of newspapers, there are many people defending a woman's right to participate in sports, or to stay single, or to do anything else. I am thankful that I was born in a time and a place where I was told that women can and should expect rights equal to men's, and that if it is not the case, then I should fight for those rights.

Of course there are people fighting for those rights here, and many women have seized them for themselves. I have met women who are lucky to have support from their parents in their job, or in choosing their husbands (which is more common now). I have met women who are do not feel constrained by some of the things I would find constraining. I am thankful for the chance to learn from many different opinions on these issues, from students and friends, male and female.

I am thankful for all of the opportunities I have been given without regard to my gender, and thankful that I have the time here to realize that. 

Coming soon: The Story of Tajik Thanksgiving. Featuring: Turkey! Pies! More Thanks!