1a. Eligibility requirements.

• Government employees and military personnel are immediately eligible for SIVs while human rights workers and journalists are not, even though they face the same level of threat from Taliban.

• An Afghan national employed on behalf of the US government or International Security Assistance Force who has been in that role for at least 2 years, and who is facing an ongoing and serious threat as a result of this employment.

• First, in order to even be eligible for an SIV, one has to be an employee for the US government-military complex. While it is widely known that human rights activists and journalists face adverse threats from the Taliban, SIV priority is given to US government employment.

Gender in Eligibility Requirements

• The masculine, security-focused job of the military being given more priority than human rights workers whose work is considered secondary, civilian-focused, and more feminine.

• The labor force consists of a disproportionate number of Afghan men. With 49% of Afghan women not having received a high school education (compared to 19% of Afghan men), it is men who then receive a college education and are eventually employed into the labor force. Higher educational attainment of men is reflected in the higher number of men who work for the US government. Many men had worked with the U.S. government as interpreters, translators, or medical staff, were proficient in English and had more education.

1b. SIV priority and SIV obtainment

• while there are female principal applicants (PAs), the vast majority of PAs are male.

• Among these male PAs, those with families are prioritized, leaving single women behind. After the US employed male PAs, priority is given to spouses, unmarried children younger than 21, who may travel with principal applicants or may follow to join after admittance to the U.S.

Gender in SIV Obtainment

• The process that prioritizes the family of a male PA to immediately be considered for SIV is a gendered practice. The family, including the often-female-spouse, is viewed as in need of protection and the male PA is viewed as the protector.

• The family is perceived as being incapable of protecting itself without the male PA, who is then automatically assumed to be head of the household.

• This leaves single women who are not dependent on a PA or did not work for the US government in a very vulnerable situation. With various checkpoints being installed around the city and women not being able to travel without a male accomplice, single women are unable to even reach the gates of the airport.

• Single women are now more vulnerable to Taliban threats than ever, yet the gender-based threats they are facing are not properly being taken into consideration. The agency of single, civilian Afghan women who were not affiliated with the US government is being undermined by both the Taliban and the SIV process.

2a. The priority is given to government and military

• The priority of evacuating countries has been getting members of the military and government out of the country. The use of resources and flights was prioritized for this group of people.

• When it came to development organizations, local partners, and aid organizations, they seemed to be much further down on the list of priorities. In the case of the US, for example, the removal of US troops, government employees, and military equipment has so far been very successful, but Afghan employees and development workers have been denied permission to evacuate.

• Among vulnerable Afghans left behind after the U.S. withdrawal in July were thousands of people who worked for small nonprofits, many funded by the State Department or agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development to promote women’s rights, education and civic engagement.

Gender in the evacuation process

• The prioritization of security personnel is an inherently gendered practice. Some realms of activity are more masculinized and highly valued than others.

• The military, for example, itself an inherently gendered structure that celebrates masculine characteristics, is seen as carrying out a more important job compared to aid organization. The military is responsible for the security of both American personnel and Afghan civilians. Their job is technical, urgent, quantifiable: all areas that are associated with masculinity and highly prioritized.

• It follows logically, then, that if they are the most important employees, their lives are more important and their evacuation should be prioritized.

• Development and aid workers, on the other hand, are seen as “soft work.” Their jobs are viewed as more social than technical, and their results are long term and less quantifiable. They are therefore perceived as feminized and appraised much less. This becomes “a self-perpetuating cycle of highly gendered systems of value and reward” which affects whose work is valued more and whose evacuation is prioritized in a situation where threat is present.

• Even though aid workers and military personnel are facing the same level of threat, aid/development workers are left behind and denied speedy evacuation. This is a direct consequence of a gendered system of value and reward.

3a. Gender and the Screening Process

• The screening process has affected Afghan men differently compared to women. The biggest obstacle facing Afghan refugees in their hosting countries is the threat of terrorism.

• In a report issued by the US Department of State, it came to light that displaced people from Afghanistan were not being vetted through the National Counter-Terrorism Center. Once the US strengthened its counter-terrorism criteria, other host countries followed, making the process of welcoming refugees much slower.

• Counter-terrorism negatively affects Afghan men considering counter-terrorism efforts are mainly male-focused. The gendered perception of men, at the intersection of ethnicity and religion, shapes the State Department’s institutional concept of who is capable of perpetrating violence or acts of terror.

3b. Women face more language and employment barriers in the host country

• So far, from the over 120,000 Afghans who have been evacuated, women are having a much more difficult time adjusting and resettling, a gendered phenomenon that is not properly addressed by the immigration system.

• The Government Accountability Office found that women had particular difficulties finding employment because they tended to have less fluency in English - 42% of SIV spouses stated that they spoke no English.

• Once they arrive in the United States, spouses of SIV PAs are often left unable to communicate with anyone other than their husbands, or other SIVs in the area, often presenting several challenges resulting in the “failure” to meet developmental resettlement expectations.

• Additionally, family resettlement camps are placed further away from urban areas, which makes commuting to work and caring for children much harder.