The Asian University for Women empowers women across the region through education, enabling them to break out of patriarchal societies. The university celebrates its 10th year this month with a fundraising benefit in Hong Kong.
Masooma Magsoodi lived most of her childhood as a refugee in Iran after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan forced her family to flee. After high school, she went to work in her uncle’s carpentry business, as refugees were not entitled to higher education and there was growing pressure for her to marry.
“I was harassed in the streets, and I used to blame myself for doing something wrong that led to it: my clothing, my make-up, the way I talked, or the time of day I was out,” Masooma recalls. When she returned to Afghanistan, things were no better. “I was told not to laugh loudly, stay out after sunset, not to attract attention. Society told me that if I wanted to live a normal life, I had to follow the social norms; to hide under a burka, to hide my thoughts and feelings.”
With no money or opportunity for further education, Masooma was destined to live life in the shadows—were it not for the Asian University for Women (AUW). She heard about it from a friend, applied to its scholarship programme and was admitted in 2010 as a politics, philosophy and economics major—the first member of her family and the first woman from her community to go to university.
While studying at the campus in Chittagong, Bangladesh, she took part in a leadership seminar co-sponsored by the US State Department that led to her developing a US-funded study on street harassment in Afghanistan.
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