International Women's Day

Unintended Beauty, her story…

Sharbat Gula (Pashto: شربت ګله, literally "Flower Sharbat") (pronounced [ˈʃaɾbat]) (born ca. 1972) is an Afghan woman who was the subject of a famous photograph by journalist Steve McCurry. Gula was living as a refugee in Pakistan, during the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when she was photographed. The image brought her recognition when it was featured on the cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic Magazine, at a time when she was approximately 12 years old. Gula was known throughout the world simply as "the Afghan Girl" until she was formally identified in early 2002.

An Afghan (Pashtun) by ethnicity, Gula was orphaned during the Soviet Union's bombing of Afghanistan and sent to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan in 1984. Her village was attacked by Soviet helicopter gunships sometime in the early 1980s. The Soviet strike killed her parents—forcing her, her siblings and grandmother to hike over the mountains to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in neighboring Pakistan. She married Rahmat Gul in the late 1980s and returned to Afghanistan in 1992. Gula had three daughters: Robina, Zahida, and Alia. A fourth daughter died in infancy. Gula has expressed the hope that her girls will receive the education she was never able to complete.

1984 photograph, “Afghan Girl” 

At the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in 1984, Gula's photograph was taken by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. Gula was one of the students in an informal school within the refugee camp; McCurry, rarely given the opportunity to photograph Afghan women, seized the opportunity and captured her image.

Although her name was not known, her picture, titled "Afghan Girl", appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. The image itself was named "the most recognized photograph" in the history of the magazine.

Search for the Afghan Girl

The identity of the Afghan Girl remained unknown for over 17 years; Afghanistan remained largely closed to Western media until after the removal of the Taliban government in 2001. Although McCurry made several attempts during the 1990s to locate her, he was unsuccessful.

In January 2002, a National Geographic team traveled to Afghanistan to locate the subject of the now-famous photograph. McCurry, upon learning that the Nasir Bagh refugee camp was soon to close, inquired of its remaining residents, one of whom knew Gula's brother and was able to send word to her hometown. However, there were a number of women who came forward and identified themselves erroneously as the famous Afghan Girl. In addition, after being shown the 1985 photo, a handful of young men falsely claimed Gula as their wife.

The team finally located Gula, then around the age of 30, in a remote region of Afghanistan; she had returned to her native country from the refugee camp in 1992. Her identity was confirmed using biometric technology, which matched her iris patterns to those of the photograph with almost full certainty. She vividly recalled being photographed—she had been photographed on only three occasions: in 1984 and during the search for her when a National Geographic producer took the identifying pictures that led to the reunion with Steve McCurry. She had never seen her famous portrait before it was shown to her in January 2003. 

 

 More recent pictures of her were featured as part of a cover story on her life in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic and she was the subject of a television documentary, entitled Search for the Afghan Girl, which aired in March 2002. In recognition of her, National Geographic set up the Afghan Girls Fund, a charitable organization with the goal of educating Afghan girls and young women. In 2008, the scope of the fund was broadened to include boys and the name was changed to Afghan Children's Fund.

The Sharbat Gula Justice Center

Educating and Empowering Women World WideMen and women are two wings of the same bird, unless they work in synchronicity the bird can not soar. 

Sharbat Gula Justice Center's mission is to promote human rights in societies that are undergoing transition from war and its associated social upheaval. They provide educational facilities, legal advocacy for victims of gender apartheid and vocational resources and training for women and girls. The core of their work is to assist women in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. While their geographic focus is on this triad, they promote equality between men and women worldwide, and work within the international framework and mandates adopted by the United Nations for developing nations. Their work is non-partisan and has broad based institutional support as the most effective means of transitioning developing nations from disorder to one governed by rule of law.

Her Life Revealed

Sharbat Gula which means "flower nectar" in Afghanistan's main language (lingua franca), of Pashto, is the most iconic recognizable face in the world, yet VERY few who recognize her haunting green eyes, know where she is from or her struggle.

Upon finding her after 17 years, she was asked what she most wanted in her life. What she asked for was not for herself but for her three daughters. Her wish has been the education of her three young daughters. To this end the Sharbat Gula Justice Center was created; to provide the means for the education of girls and women in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. While their geographic focus is based on this trinity, they assist women worldwide, building schools, providing vocational training and legal asylum for victims of gender based persecution. Their work revolves not around 'charity' but JUSTICE. It is only JUST that everyone, most importantly WOMEN have the same opportunities that exist for men, if not more so, for women are the first teachers of children and the creators of future generations. This work and programs on behalf of women have inspired other NGO's and policy makers to focus on women as the focal point of effective "nation building". Women's rights promotion and socio-economic development opportunities for women have been cited and documented by numerous United Nations studies to be the most effective remedy for societies in transition who wish to join the group of developed nations.

UPON REFLECTION ON INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY, MARCH 8^TH:

§  Victimization and Third World: being orphaned, a girl and a refugee.

§  Beauty Standards/Awareness: how do you think Sharbat Gula conceived her own beauty as opposed to the Western standards?

§  Reaching Goals/ Motherhood/ Main Wish: Education for her daughters.

§  Recognition/Achievements/ (Un)intentionally.

Reflect Upon the Following extracts:

When they met again, McCurry told Sharbat her image had become famous as a symbol of the Afghan people. "I don't think she was particularly interested in her personal fame," McCurry said. "But she was pleased when we said she had come to be a symbol of the dignity and resilience of her people."

The award-winning photographer said his original image of Sharbat had seized the imagination of so many people around the world because her face, particularly her eyes, expressed pain and resilience as well as strength and beauty.

When Sharbat agreed to have her picture taken for the second time in her life, she came out from the secrecy of her veil to tell her story. She wanted the people around the world who knew her face to know that she survived the refugee camp in Pakistan.Sharbat said she fared relatively well under Taliban rule, which, she feels, provided a measure of stability after the chaos and terror of the Soviet war.

According to Matson and McCurry, Sharbat Gula has returned to anonymity; the latest publicity about her name and face is unlikely to draw attention to her in Afghanistan. "She will not give another media interview and she wishes not to be contacted," Matson said.

"Clearly she has become a symbol that National Geographic has used to illustrate the circumstances of refugees like her, and many people have inquired about her," he said. "She stood for an entire group of refugees, not just Afghan refugees. She has helped us with our mission of educating people about other cultures and regions—and she's helping us again by drawing attention to the lives of Afghan women and girls in general."                                                                                                                                             

Have a nice week you all.

A special mention to all women within our group and beyond on this day...

Cheers,

-Inma.

Grammar Tip # 4: The Passive Voice

Passive Voice Chart
Verb tenses & aspects	Active voice	Passive voice
Present simple	John sells cars.	Cars are sold by John.
Past simple	John sold cars.	Cars were sold by John.
Present continuous	John is selling cars.	Cars are being sold by John.
Past continuous	John was selling cars.	Cars were being sold by John.
Present perfect	John has sold cars.	Cars have been sold by John.
Past perfect	John had sold cars.	Cars had been sold by John.
Future simple	John will sell cars.	Cars will be sold by John.
Conditional	John would sell cars.	Cars would be sold by John.
Future perfect	John will have sold cars.	Cars will have been sold by John.
Conditional perfect	John would sell cars.	Cars would have been sold by John.
Future be going to	John is going to sell cars.	Cars are going to be sold by John.
Future in the past	John was going to sell cars.	Cars were going to be sold by John.

YOU WILL FIND ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PASSIVE IN ENGLISH IN THE FOLLOWING LINKS:

• ALL ABOUT PASSIVE. Click here and browse the whole site  Highly recommended.
• Tutorial on PASSIVE
• Myths about PASSIVE USE

Reflections Upon English passive voice

The passive voice is a grammatical construction (a "voice") in which the subject of a sentence or clause denotes the recipient of the action rather than the performer. In the English language, the English passive voice is formed with an auxiliary verb (usually be or get) plus a participle (usually the past participle) of a transitive verb.

For example, "Caesar was stabbed by Brutus" uses the passive voice. The subject denotes the individual (Caesar) affected by the action of the verb. The counterpart to this in active voice is, "Brutus stabbed Caesar," in which the subject denotes the doer, or agent, Brutus.

A sentence featuring the passive voice is sometimes called a passive sentence, and a verb phrase in passive voice is sometimes called a passive verb. English differs from languages in which voice is indicated through a simple inflection, since the English passive is periphrastic, composed of an auxiliary verb plus the past participle of the transitive verb.

Use of the English passive varies with writing style and field. Some style sheets discourage use of passive voice, while others encourage it.

Identifying the English passive

In the following excerpt from the 18th-century United States Declaration of Independence (1776), the bold text identifies passive verbs; italicized text identifies the one active verb (hold) and the copulative verb  are:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

In this case, the agent ("the Creator") of the passive construction can be identified with a by phrase. When such a phrase is missing, the construction is an agentless passive. For example, "Caesar was stabbed" is a perfectly grammatical full sentence, in a way that "stabbed Caesar" and "Brutus stabbed" are not. Agentless passives are common in scientific writing, where the agent may be irrelevant (e.g. "The mixture was heated to 300°C").

It is not the case, however, that any sentence in which the agent is unmentioned or marginalised is an example of the passive voice. Sentences like "There was a stabbing" or "A stabbing occurred" are not passive. See "Misapplication of the term," below for more discussion of this misconception.

Usage and style

Against the passive voice

Many language critics and language-usage manuals discourage use of the passive voice. This advice is not usually found in older guides, emerging only in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993) stated that:

Active voice makes subjects do something (to something); passive voice permits subjects to have something done to them (by someone or something). Some argue that active voice is more muscular, direct, and succinct, passive voice flabbier, more indirect, and wordier. If you want your words to seem impersonal, indirect, and noncommittal, passive is the choice, but otherwise, active voice is almost invariably likely to prove more effective.

For the passive voice

Passive writing is not necessarily slack and indirect. Many famously vigorous passages use the passive voice, as in these examples:

• Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. (King James Bible, Isaiah 40:4)
• Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York. (Shakespeare's Richard III, I.1, ll. 1–2)
• For of those to whom much is given, much is required. (John F. Kennedy's quotation of Luke 12:48 in his address to the Massachusetts legislature, 9 January 1961.)
• Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. (Winston Churchill addressing the House of Commons, 20 August 1940.)

Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1994) recommends the passive voice when identifying the object (receiver) of the action is more important than the subject (agent), and when the agent is unknown, unimportant, or not worth mentioning:

• The child was struck by the car.
• The store was robbed last night.
• Plows should not be kept in the garage.
• Kennedy was elected president.

The principal criticism against the passive voice is its potential for evasion of responsibility. This is because a passive clause may omit the agent even where it is important:

• We had hoped to report on this problem, but the data were inadvertently deleted from our files.

However, the passive can also be used to emphasize the agent, and it may be better for that role than the active voice, because the end of a clause is the ideal place to put something you wish to emphasize:

• Don't you see? The patient was murdered by his own doctor!

Similarly, the passive may be useful when modifying the agent, as heavily modified noun phrases also tend to occur last in a clause:

• The breakthrough was achieved by Burlingame and Evans, two researchers in the university's genetic engineering lab.

Passive constructions

In general, the passive voice is used to place focus on the grammatical patient, rather than the agent. This properly occurs when the patient is the topic of the sentence. However, the passive voice can also be used when the focus is on the agent.

Canonical passives

Passive constructions have a range of meanings and uses. The canonical use is to map a clause with a direct object o a corresponding clause where the direct object has become the subject. For example:

• John threw the ball.

Here threw is a transitive verb with John as its subject and the ball as its direct object. If we recast the verb in the passive voice (was thrown), then the ball becomes the subject (it is "promoted" to the subject position) and John disappears:

• The ball was thrown.

The original "demoted" subject can typically be re-inserted using the preposition by.

• The ball was thrown by John.

Promotion of other objects (Double object passive)

One non-canonical use of English's passive is to promote an object other than a direct object. It is usually possible in English to promote indirect objects as well. For example:

• John gave Mary a book. → Mary was given a book.
• John gave Mary a book. → Mary was given a book by John.

In the active form, gave is the verb; John is its subject, Mary its indirect object, and a book its direct object. In the passive forms, the indirect object has been promoted and the direct object has been left in place. (In "A book was given to Mary", the direct object is promoted and the indirect object left in place).

It is also possible, in some cases, to promote the object of a preposition:

• They talked about the problem. → The problem was talked about.

In the passive form here, the preposition is "stranded"; that is, it is not followed by an object.

Promotion of content clauses

It is possible to promote a content clause that serves as a direct object. In this case, however, the clause typically does not change its position in the sentence, and an expletive it takes the normal subject position:

• They say that he left. → It is said that he left

Stative passives

The passives described above are all eventive (or dynamic) passives. Stative (or static, or resultative) passives also exist in English; rather than describing an action, they describe the result of an action. English does not usually distinguish between the two. For example:

• The window was broken.

This sentence has two different meanings, roughly the following:

• [Someone] broke the window.
• The window was not intact.

The former meaning represents the canonical, eventive passive; the latter, the stative passive. (The terms eventive and stative/resultative refer to the tendencies of these forms to describe events and resultant states, respectively. The terms can be misleading, however, as the canonical passive of a stative verb is not a stative passive, even though it describes a state.)

Some verbs do not form stative passives. In some cases, this is because distinct adjectives exist for this purpose, such as with the verb open:

• The door was opened. → [Someone] opened the door.
• The door was open. → The door was in the open state.

Adjectival passives

Adjectival passives are not true passives; they occur when a participial adjective (an adjective derived from a participle) is used predicatively. For example:

• She was relieved to find her car undamaged.

Here, relieved is an ordinary adjective, though it derives from the past participle of relieve, and that past participle may be used in canonical passives:

• He was relieved of duty.

In some cases, the line between an adjectival passive and a stative passive may be unclear.

Passives without active counterparts

In a few cases, passive constructions retain all the sense of the passive voice, but do not have immediate active counterparts. For example:

• He was rumored to be a war veteran. ← *[Someone] rumored him to be a war veteran.

(The asterisk here denotes an ungrammatical construction.) Similarly:

• It was rumored that he was a war veteran. ← *[Someone] rumored that he was a war veteran.

In both of these examples, the active counterpart was once possible, but has fallen out of use.

Double passives

It is possible for a verb in the passive voice—especially an object-raising verb—to take an infinitive complement that is also in the passive voice:

• The project is expected to be completed in the next year.

Commonly, either or both verbs may be moved into the active voice:

• [Someone] expects the project to be completed in the next year.
• [Someone] is expected to complete the project in the next year.
• [Someone] expects [someone] to complete the project in the next year.

In some cases, a similar construction may occur with a verb that is not object-raising in the active voice:

•  ?The project will be attempted to be completed in the next year. ← *[Someone] will attempt the project to be completed in the next year. ← [Someone] will attempt to complete the project in the next year.

(The question mark here denotes a questionably-grammatical construction.) In this example, the object of the infinitive has been promoted to the subject of the main verb, and both the infinitive and the main verb have been moved to the passive voice. The American Heritage Book of English Usage declares this unacceptable, but it is nonetheless recommended in a variety of contexts.

Misapplication of the term

Occasionally, writers misapply the term passive voice to sentences that do not identify the actor. For example, this extract from The New Yorker magazine refers to the American embezzler Bernard Madoff; bold text identifies the mis-identified passive voice verbs:

Two sentences later, Madoff said, “When I began the Ponzi scheme, I believed it would end shortly, and I would be able to extricate myself, and my clients, from the scheme.” As he read this, he betrayed no sense of how absurd it was to use the passive voice in regard to his scheme, as if it were a spell of bad weather that had descended on him . . . In most of the rest of the statement, one not only heard the aggrieved passive voice, but felt the hand of a lawyer: “To the best of my recollection, my fraud began in the early nineteen-nineties.”

The intransitive verbs would end and began are in the active voice; however, how the speaker uses the words subtly diverts responsibility from him. In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White mis-apply the passive voice term to several active voice constructions; Prof. Geoffrey Pullum writes:

Of the four pairs of examples offered to show readers what to avoid and how to correct it, a staggering three out of the four are mistaken diagnoses. “At dawn the crowing of a rooster could be heard” is correctly identified as a passive clause, but the other three are all errors:

• “There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground” has no sign of the passive in it anywhere.

• “It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she had”, also contains nothing that is even reminiscent of the passive construction.

• “The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired”, is presumably fingered as passive because of impaired, but that’s a mistake. It’s an adjective here.

PLEASE BE PROACTIVE USING PASSIVE. COMMENTS, QUESTIONS AND DOUBTS IN CLASS, AS USUSAL. (HERE AS WELL, OF COURSE!)

HAVE A NICE WEEK.