Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 43 Gender Discrimination in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugianti Universitas Negeri Surabaya (Unesa), Surabaya iissmpn2@gmail.com Article History: Submitted 2 August 2016; Accepted 28 February 2018; Published 30 March 2018 ABSTRACT Women‟s life without discrimination or violence is the freedom and entitlement of women‟s rights. The objective of the study is to achieve the idea. Dealing with it, the researcher applies feminism approach proposed by Damewood‟s theory of gender discrimination. Gender discrimination refers to the practice of granting or denying rights or privilege to a person based on his/her gender that is longstanding and acceptable to both genders. The novel Snow and A Thousand Splendid Suns focus on gender discrimination, violence, oppression, and struggle to fight against them. The researcher explores how gender discrimination, patriarchy culture and most of violence and oppression happened in family and country. The phenomenon of violence is not only a discrimination done by husbands who do gender discrimination in family, but also a fight done by a wife to fight against them, it depends on its case. In Snow, the women character faced many problems related to their headscarves. They are discriminated by their government and parents. Kadife is depicted as a brave woman. She tries to defend women‟s right in Kars to keep on using their headscarves. While in A Thousand Splendid Suns, the limitation of women‟s activity happened. Women are banned to get education and they should stay at home. Mariam and Laila get oppression and violence by their husband. Their struggle is shown in the murder of their husband, Rasheed. The unstable practice of gender discrimination was continuously preserved by the culture, not religion. It was like a patriarchal culture that is one of clear examples of the women phenomena in the world and it can be in the form of prohibition and limitation of the role of women in the public area. Keywords: gender discrimination, violence, oppression, patriarchy ABSTRAK Kehidupan perempuan tanpa diskriminasi atau kekerasan merupakan kebebasan dan perwujudan hak-hak perempuan. Tujuan dari studi ini adalah untuk mencapai gagasan tersebut. Terkait dengan hal ini, peneliti menerapkan pendekatan feminis yang diajukan mailto:iissmpn2@gmail.com Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 44 oleh Damewood dalam teori diskriminasi gender. Diskriminasi gender merujuk pada praktik pemberian atau penolakan atau pengistimewaaan seseorang berdasarkan gender yang berlangsung lama dan diterima oleh kedua gender. Novel “Snow” dan “A Thousand Splendid Suns” fokus pada diskriminasi gender, kekerasan, opresi, dan perjuangan untuk melawannya. Peneliti meneliti bagaimana diskriminasi gender, budaya patriarki, dan sebagian besar kekerasan dan opresi terjadi di dalam keluarga dan negara. Fenomena kekerasan tidak hanya diskriminasi yang dilakukan oleh suami yang melakukan diskriminasi gender di dalam keluarga, namun juga perlawanan yang dilakukan oleh istri kepada suami, bergantung pada kasusnya. Dalam novel “Snow”, karakter perempuan digambarkan menghadapi banyak persoalan yang terkait dengan penutup kepala mereka. Mereka didiskriminasi oleh pemerintah dan orang tua mereka sendiri. Kadife digambarkan sebagai seorang perempuan yang pemberani. Dia berusaha untuk membela hak perempuan di Kars untuk tetap menggunakan tutup kepala mereka. Sedangkan di “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, pembatasan atas aktivitas perempuan terjadi. Kaum perempuan dilarang untuk mendapatkan pendidikan dan mereka harus tinggal di rumah. Mariam dan Laila mengalami opresi dan kekerasan dari suami mereka. Perjuangan mereka ditunjukkan dengan pembunuhan tehadap suami mereka, Rasheed. Praktik diskriminasi gender yang tidak stabil dilestarikan secara berkelanjutan oleh budaya, bukan agama. Adalah semacam budaya partriarki yang merupakan salah satu contoh dari fenomena perempuan di dunia ini dan hal tersebut dapat berupa pelarangan dan pembatasan peran perempuan di wilayah publik. Kata kunci: diskriminasi gender, kekerasan, opresi, patriarki INTRODUCTION For a long time women have been considered rely on man‟s power. Women as in the stereotype are expected to stay at home and do the house chores. But women shouldn‟t always be at home and bond to it, as Wollstonecraft states in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman that house isn‟t a prison to women. It means that women should feel free to choose suitable role by themselves. Husbands shouldn‟t use their power to not allow this, due to the fact that men are considered to provide money for the family. Women can have career outside the house because mother-role can be done by anyone, both husband and wife. Every girl also has freedom and opportunity to do and to be what she wants and also encouraged to be able to do that (Bashin and Khan, 1995: 31-33). Men and women are considered different physically and socially. Physically, they differ in terms of physical appearance. Women have fatter and less muscle than men‟s. Men are stronger than women (Wardhaugh, 1986: 303). Socially they differ in terms of the social role in the society; women do not pose high position in the work as men do. These differences create great differences between men and women. But, those differences are Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 45 considered harmful for women but advantageous for men only. Those differences seem to abolish the existence of women. Unfortunately, this construction, as explained above, gives no advantage to women. On the other side, it continues to the practice of discrimination to women. According to Lips in Amin (2009: 16-17), discrimination is what is being concerned by feminist through as gender. Gender is understood as a term used to encompass the social expectation associated with femininity and masculinity. Finding that cultures also differ from other cultures in their rules and expectation for femininity (and for masculinity) is a good clue that gender is “socially constructed”. The social construction of gender produces inequality in gender perception especially in defining women itself. It caused the inequity for women manifested in many aspects such as education, political right, work position, etc. But all of them share the certain premises such as the notion that inequalities between women and men should be challenged. The oppressive situation and violence against women are found in a great number of women personal experiences throughout their lives. There are a lot of proves showing that women were victims of sex industry without their human values as prostitutes. But, in the end, the exploitation leaves suffering, defeat, despair, and even death for women. The great numbers of women, who become violence victims, which occur to most servants, female workers, or commercial sex workers, are susceptible to sexual despising and risk which they have to face. The condition was a form of the vanishing of self-authority to establish and decide the choice of life. In general, women want justice and equal roles in all dimensions of their behaviors, such as justice in politics, economics, and society. Psychologically, a woman who works in consolation places is very susceptible to getting critique and alienation from her society; whereas, biologically, women are susceptible to getting infectious sexual diseases, narcotic addiction, and abortion. The gender differences are one of important approaches in feminist though. It is considered as the main framework of first feminism because it generates all sorts of gender inequality such as subordination, marginalization, and stereotypes. The gender differences are useful framework to explain that oppressed condition experienced by women is not a natural thing. For instance, a statement that men are physically powerful, rational, and masculine and women is irrational, feminine, weak and motherly creature is kind of gender stereotyping that causes negative impacts such as men are more powerful than women, and woman are considered to be natural, as presented below: Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 46 “Because men had more power than women, their tendency to judge the other group (women) as being more alike and less influenced by external forces than their own group (men) had a big impact. Women, whose opinions have received less attention, have been particularly affected by the tendency to view gender-related expectation as natural, rather than as socially constructed. Concept such as feminine frailty, maternal instinct, female irrationality, all considered to be built into female biology, abound and have traditionally been used to explain restriction of women‟s role.” (Lips in Amin, 2009: 17) The unstable practice of gender discrimination, continuously, is preserved by the culture, not religion. It is like a patriarchal culture that is one of the clear examples of the women phenomenon. It can be in form of prohibition and limitation of the role of women in public area. Traditionally, women are assumed as the one who can only be a “good” housewife, a “good” mother, a “good” wife, and so on, with respect to the community‟s norms and stereotypes for appropriate female behavior (Holmes & Meyerhaoff, 2003: 104). Whatever the reason is any limitation of women‟s role and other discriminations happening in any times and associated with one sex or gender is identified as a bias act or bias gender. Gender discrimination refers to the practice of granting or denying rights or privileges to a person based on his or her gender. In some societies, this practice is longstanding and acceptable to both genders. Certain religious group embraces gender discrimination as a part of its dogma. However, in most industrialized nations, it is either illegal or generally considered inappropriate (Damewood: 2010). Attitude towards gender discrimination can normally be traced back to the roots of certain segments of society. Much of the discrimination is attributed to the stories such as a woman being made from man‟s rib and societal practices such as dowries paid to fathers by prospective husbands to purchase their daughters to be wives. Gender discrimination and violence against women are global phenomena as old as the human history. Women‟s right is the freedom and entitlement of women of human rights without discrimination or violation. Women‟s right is right inherent in nature and guaranteed by law. Therefore, gender discrimination and violence against women are contrary to fundamental human rights, equality, natural justice and good governance. In human rights issues, availability and access to information on the nature of women‟s rights and dimensions of gender discrimination and violence can never be more appropriate than now. Moreover, women‟s rights, gender discriminations, and violence are issues that are as old as humankind, and are parts of many religious and cultural traditions. Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 47 Related with gender issues, nowadays, there are many women activists or feminists who study gender problems that happen in society. The feminists are more interested in seeing how women have been marginalized and viewed in legal position by the society. In terms of the family as a unit of socio-economic production, gender sensitive program directed at this level can make a difference in terms of developing a functional knowledge base. Through networks of formal and informal training all stakeholders in the development process become imbued with value orientations that form the basis of a strong productivity culture geared at creating confidence and commitment to enhancing the quality of life. Stakeholders would include: politicians, policy makers, public servants, business, interest, themselves. Because gender is such a generic theme that pervades all levels of society and is not restrained by natural or human barriers, the implications for developing the family into a stronger unit of socio-economic production is such, that is relevance to Pacific island communities in this age of rapid globalization, is timely and functionally appropriate for the changing demands of dual economic system (Nabalarua in Issues of gender and Family). Gender socialization is deeply rooted in families and schools and often very hard to be recognized. Traditional definitions of masculine and feminine give our children only half of the skills and opportunities they need to grow into adulthood. These loses are damaging to the healthy development of both girls and boys (Graham, 2001: 3), as parents, teachers, coaches, family and friends, try to help young people grow up with the skills they need as adults. We know that someday most girls are going to work outside home, and that most boys are going to be partners and boys need a full repertoire of skills to develop a strong identity, to be able to achieve fully in the world, and to develop and maintain healthy relationship (Ibid., 2001: 3). In 2002, Orhan Pamuk published a novel entitled Snow. In the novel, Pamuk presents the atmosphere of the small Turkish town of Kars, i.e. an isolated town due to the snowstorm that covers the access of the town. He also described how conflict happens in Kars when the city is isolated from the outside world. Pamuk said that Snow was his first and last political novel. Not only an isolated town that is raised in the novel, but also the issues about how women appear. This novel has brought Pamuk to become the winner of the Nobel Prize in Sweden and the Le Prix Mẽditerranẽẽ ẽtranger for Snow. Snow was chosen as one of the 100 best books in 2004 by The New York Times. In 2005, Pamuk got the Peace Prize and Snow got Le Prix Medicis Etranger, an award for foreign novels in France. Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 48 Snow is a novel about a journalist, Ka (Orhan Pamuk himself) who travelled from Istanbul to the small Turkish town named Kars. He became a witness and a victim of the violence between Islamic politicians, soldiers, secularists and Turkish and Kurdish nationalists in Kars (Orhan Pamuk‟s biography). Ka met a female character named Kadife who is depicted as a strong women and struggle for women‟s right to use headscarf during the conflict in Kars after being underestimated due to his background of growing in secular family. As the story goes, Kadife was challenged not to use the headscarf to proof that she loves his country more than anything else. Other than Kadife, there are some other female characters that also become the center of attention in the novel because they use headscarf, even if those are not the main characters. However, they attracted significant readers‟ attentions. Kadife is portrayed as a woman who wears headscarf only to get closer with a Muslim activist named Lazuardi. Women issues and gender issues also appear in A Thousand Splendid Suns novel, which was published in 2007. Khaled Hossseini, the writer of this novel, has succeeded in writing his first international best seller novel, the second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. The novel was released on May 22, 2007. It has obtained favorable prepublication reviews from Kirkus, Publisher weekly, Library Journal and Booklist for its fundamental portrait of gender issues and women‟s sufferings. This novel has so far been published in 60 countries. This novel is not as famous as Snow, but the description of the female characters that struggle for their rights in the country, which is full of inter ethnics tension, is similar with the situation in Snow. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a novel that uses a lot of feminism perspectives. A Thousand Splendid Suns deals with oppression of women and the struggle against male domination. A Thousand Splendid Suns vividly exposes the hardship experienced by the main characters: Mariam and Laila, and how their ways to survive in hopeless society. Hosseini quickly makes it clear that he intends to deal with the plight of women in Afghanistan, and in the opening pages the novel‟s two heroines talk portentously about lot in life, a lot of poor, uneducated women who have to endure the hardship of life, the slights of men, the disdain of the society and the struggle against oppression. A Thousand Splendid Suns is a great masterpiece since it is generally hones enough to give a more informed and rounded appreciation of the life of Afghan women. It makes the readers think profoundly about life and what they can do for the society despite all sufferings that society has caused them. Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 49 Because of the similarities of those two novels, i.e. gender issues, which are told by male writers, this study will be analyzed by using comparative literature because it focuses on exploring the gender discriminations in two literary works from two different countries, which have different cultural and social backgrounds. The comparative literature involves the study of the text across cultures; that it is interdisciplinary and that is concerned with patterns of connection in literatures across both time and space (Bassnett, 1993). Comparative literature deals with works of two or more nations, depending on the nature of the work. Comparative literary research (Wellek and Warren, 1949: 39) says that comparative literature deals with other disciplines which include the study of two or more literary works, and studies of entire genres including short stories, poems and novels. METHOD The research design used for this study is feminist approach because it analyzes gender discrimination, violence & oppression and patriarchy as the object of analysis, so the most appropriate approach is feminist approach for understanding women‟s life and women‟s issues (Mulvey, 1988: 74). This approach has been innovative in its choice to study particular groups of women formerly ignored by social science (e.g., upper class women), particular behaviors (e.g. feeding one‟s family, adult adoption of orthodox, religion, improving one‟s community) and new forms of data (e.g. women‟s subjective social experience or subjective self) (Reinharz, 1992: 215). From those explanations, feminism concerns with issues of broader social change and social justice and committed to change the condition of women. Therefore, the ultimate goal is to increase the understanding of women‟s experience, both in the past and present, and promote appreciation of women‟s value in the world (Tyson, 2006: 119). This study also uses comparative literature because those two novels are written by different authors from different countries. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Findings Gender discrimination and violence against women are global phenomena as old as human history. Women‟s right are the freedom and entitlement of women of human rights without discrimination or violation, women‟s right are rights inherent in nature and guaranteed by law. Therefore, gender discrimination and violence against women are contrary to fundamental human rights, equity, natural justice and good governance. Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 50 Reconstructing women‟s right, gender discrimination and violence through library and information services is aimed to make information available to all historical issue. In human right issues, availability and access to information on the nature of women‟s rights and dimension of gender discrimination and violence can never be more appropriate than it is now. Women‟s rights, gender discrimination, and violence are issues as old as humankind, and are parts of many religious and cultural traditions. In ancient Athens, women were always minors and subject to a male, such as their fathers, brothers, or some other males. Women‟s consents in marriage were not generally thought to be necessary and women were obliged to submit to the wishes of their parents or husbands. The gender discrimination shows the female characters‟ positions in both of the novels. In the novel Snow the gender discrimination occurs when there is a ban for women from the government to not use headscarf in their daily life. Women in Snow represent the stereotype of ones who live under the patriarchal system. Snow is set in the political turbulence, conflicts, interest and civil wars among the secularist government, communists, Muslim extremists, and Kurdish nationalists in Turkey as the impacts of the rapid westernization initiated by Attaturk, the father of the Turks in 1924. Orhan Pamuk is one of Turkey‟s phenomenal authors. He delves into what he defines Turkishness and how that Turkishness has been shaped by history, myth, the confrontation between tradition and modernity, religion and secularism, political ideologies and ethnicities. Unfortunately, the discrimination in the government is faced by women because of a strong and rooted patriarchal system. In this term, women are forced to accept the new regulation which has been implemented. See the data below: The only suicide who had delivered him back to that loneliness was the covered girl who had killed herself almost six weeks ago. This suicide was one of the famous “head-scarf girls.” When the authorities had out-lawed the wearing of head scarves in educational institutions across the country, many women refused to comply; the noncompliant young women at the Institute of Education in Kars had been barred first from the classrooms and then, following an edict from Ankara, from the entire campus. (Pamuk, 2005: 14) Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was the first president of Turkey in 1923. He changed the monarchical system based on Islamic way into secular republic system. He reformed the constitution and law, which was adopted from Europe. There are five reforms which have been done: political, legal, educational & cultural, and economical reforms. Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 51 The new reforms are conducted to give a better life for women in Turkey; but unfortunately it gives negative effect. The government control the use of traditional cloth” fez “ and headscarves in social reform ;it meant that headscarves are prohibited. When Ataturk wants to adopt the constitutional & law from Europe; automatically, he breaks out the Islamic tradition including of the use of headscarves. He expects the Turkish women will get a higher reputation by taking off their scarf as the European women (Pamuk, 2005: 79). Therefore, Ataturk adopts the Eurosentrism to his own country and forces the Turkish women to imitate the way how they dress and change their standard of beauty. Meanwhile, the violence and oppression against women are found in a great number of women‟s personal experiences throughout their lives. There are a lot of proves that show that women become the victims of sex industry without their humanitarian values as prostitutes, but in the end, the exploitation left suffering, defeat and despair, even death for women. A great number of women-violence victims, which occur to most servants, women labors or commercial sex workers, are susceptible to sexual despising and some risks that they have to face. That condition was a form of the vanishing of self-authority to establish and decide the choice of life. In general, women also need justice and equal roles in all dimensions of their behaviors, such as justice in politics, economics, and society. Psychologically, women who work in consolation place are very susceptible to getting critique and alienation from their society. Women in Snow get some oppression not only from the government but also their parents. Ipek, the female character gets the oppression from her husband to wear headscarf but she refuses it because it is not appropriate with her mind. They have different opinions about headscarf; furthermore, she also does not get a child from her husband. In patriarchal society, wives must obey their husband‟s commands. Nevertheless, it is different with Ipek, she has her own way to maintain his principal. In Muhtar‟s mind, Ipek, his ex- spouse, was a sensitive, sincere, and care woman. On the contrary, gender discrimination in A Thousand Splendid Suns occurred when women get the limitation to do their activities. Women cannot get good education. It happens when Mariam wants to go to school. She wants to have a good education but Nana doesn‟t allow her to go to school. Now, Mariam only studies Koran to Mullah Faizulla and some other knowledge. Nana thinks that no one will accept her at school because she is a harami. That‟s the fear of Nana about her daughter in the society that she can do nothing and no one cares about harami. By that reason, women only have one skill, that‟s Tahamul (endure), but Mariam implicitly wants to get educated like other people do. Mariam and Laila also get violence and oppression from their husband in forms of physical, emotional, sexual and Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 52 economical abuses. Their struggle to minimize their sufferings is by killing Rasheed. Discussion Gender discussion, violence, oppression and also patriarchy in this study are in line with the theory explained in the previous chapter. Gender discrimination is discrimination against person or group on the ground of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Unfair discrimination usually follows the gender stereotyping held by society. Damewood (2010) explains that gender discrimination refers to the practice of granting or denying rights or privileges to a person based on their gender. In some societies, this practice is longstanding and acceptable to both genders. Certain religious group embraces gender discrimination as a part of their dogma. However, in most industrializes nations, it is either illegal or generally considered inappropriate. Gender discriminations against women are global phenomena as old as human history. Women‟s rights are the freedom and entitlement of women of human rights without discrimination. Moreover, women‟s rights, gender discrimination, and violence are issues as old as humankind, and parts of many religious and cultural traditions. In Snow, the female characters faced so many problems related to their scarf and they are discriminated by the government and their parents. Turkey government has changed the rule of women performance in using their dress and scarf. When Mustafa Kemal Ataturk became the first president of Turkey, he has done some reforms which adopted the constitution and law from Europe. There are five reformations which have been done: political, legal, educational and cultural, and economical reforms. Those reforms should be good news for women in Turkey. Unfortunately, it gives some negative effects. They feel so oppressed because of the new regulation (Pamuk, 2005: 134). Headscarf prohibition is one of the aspects in social reforms. The government controls the use traditional cloth “fez” and headscarves. On the other hand, Kadife is portrayed as a tough and brave woman who tries to defend women‟s rights to keep on using their headscarves. The way out of gender discrimination is women‟s power empowerment. This involves the strengthening of the individual and collective abilities of women for positive actions. This has to be done through all the agents of socialization starting from the family to the community, schools, churches, libraries, mosque and government. According to Chan (2010), we will not see sustainable progress unless we fix failures in health system and society so that girls and women enjoy equal Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 53 access to health information and services, education, employment, and political positions. Men and women are considered different both physically and socially. Physically, they differ in terms of physical appearance. Women have fatter and less muscle than men; meanwhile men are stronger than women (Wardhaugh, 1986: 303). Socially, they differ in terms of the social role in the society. Women do not need to get high education since they will just finally maintain household. Women do not pose a high position at work as men do. That‟s why education is very important for women to change their life and society. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hakim, father of Laila says that education is everything in this life. He explains that women should not marry soon because there is more important than it. He always reminds Laila to learn so much knowledge. He believes that without gender discrimination and educated women, Afghanistan will become developed country and they will success in their lives. Here, in this novel women become the object to be discriminated. They are the victims. By giving a change of education for women and change the old tradition that women should stay at home and must be accompanied by Mahrom, perhaps, at this time women will reach their rights and freedom in their lives. In gender discourse, patriarchy becomes the root of women‟s problems. In patriarchal culture, women are put in second position under men. The inferior status places women as a victim of man‟s domination, and the problem forces them to be discriminated. Walby (2001) defines patriarchy as a “…system of social structure and practices in which man dominates, oppress, and exploit women”. The definition underlines the importance of viewing patriarchy as a structural phenomenon rather than one perpetuated by the individual exploitative man. The concept of patriarchy has evolved from the struggles of women all over the world. It encompasses the totality of structures of domination and exploitation that affect woman‟s position in society. Very clearly, this system establishes men to dominate and control women in society. The „unequal power relationship‟ between men and women accrues power to men in an important institution or society. CONCLUSION Turkey and Afghanistan have a good bilateral relationship. They also have the same dominant religion: Islam. Furthermore, they have ever been invaded by the same country: Russia. The time when the two novels were firstly published and the background of the authors of the two novels are Lensa: Kajian Kebahasaan, Kesusastraan, dan Budaya p-ISSN: 2086-6100 Vol. 8 No. 1 http://jurnal.unimus.ac.id/index.php/lensa e-ISSN: 2503-328X Gender Discrimination in Orkhan Pamuk’s Snow and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns Iis Sugiyanti DOI: https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.8.1.2018.43-55 54 similar. Both Pamuk and Hosseini have spent time of their lives more in America rather than in their own country. Besides, the historical relationship between Turkey and Afghanistan makes the comparison between these two novels become more interesting. The women‟s conditions in those two countries have also similarities simply because they must struggle for their rights. One of the examples is the freedom to dress. Women in Turkey are not able to wear veil freely since there is a ban for women to wear veil. On the contrary, in Afghanistan, women need to wear clothing that covers the body from head to toe (burqa) under the Taliban government. From the data analysis, it is found that the statements from words, sentences, paragraphs and dialogues expressed show gender discrimination, violence and oppression and also patriarchy. Gender discriminations in both novels are shown. In Snow, gender discriminations happen when there is a regulation to ban the use of veil/scarf for women. Because of this regulation, some of the women commit suicide as a form of protest to the government. Meanwhile, in A Thousand Splendid Suns, the women are not allowed to get formal education. The roles of women are to do all the households and to be a good wife and mother for the family. Violence & oppressions over women are shown in those two novels. In Snow, some of the female characters get oppressed by their parents to marry older and richer men in order to pay off their parent‟s debts. In another case, there was a woman who gets violence from her husband because he is jobless so that he couldn‟t control his emotion. But in A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam and Laila get oppression and violence from their husband, Rasheed. The two novels also reflect the system of patriarchy in the countries that become the setting of the novel. In Snow, the patriarchal system happens when the government makes a new regulation that women should obey it whether they like it or not; meanwhile, in A Thousand Splendid Suns, Talibans forbid women to work outside their houses, forced them to wear the burqa, apparel which covers almost all part of women‟s bodies, and ban them to travel alone. They should be accompanied by a male relative, and also banned them to go to schools. REFERENCES Amin, Mustafa. 2009. A Critical Discourse Analysis of Gender Stereotyping in Its a Boy Girl Thing Movie. Malang: UIN. Bashin, Kamla and Khan, Nighat Said. 1995. What is Patriarchy?.Kali for women: New Delhi. Damewood, Cassie L. 2010. What Is Gender Discrimination. 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