PHOTO: Two Afghan girls read a poem highlighting the governor’s support for education, prior to the Taliban’s ascent to power on Wikimedia Commons
Four and a half years ago, the gates to knowledge and opportunity were shut tight and never opened again. Since the Taliban’s ascent to power in 2021, girls across Afghanistan have been denied education beyond primary school level. It is a ban that has stagnated a generation of women’s futures.
For many Afghan families, the consequences are deeply personal. Daughters are left watching their brothers leave for school while they remain confined to their homes. Teachers are forced to continue their work in secret, turning underground basements into makeshift classrooms, while women face punishment simply for attempting to work.
Afghanistan is entering its fifth year as the only country in the world where girls cannot go to school. What had begun as a temporary restriction on schooling has now evolved into the systemic erasure of women from public life.
A rapid reversal of women’s rights under Taliban rule
Following the withdrawal of US and NATO forces and the subsequent collapse of the Afghan government in August 2021, the Taliban rapidly regained control over the country. Since then, the regime has regularly issued orders to eliminate the legal rights, freedoms and human status of Afghan women and girls.
Prior to the takeover, the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan had recognised women’s participation across education, employment and media as essential to rebuilding the country’s economy. Millions of Afghan women had access to universities, workplaces and public life, as seen by women making up 27% of the country’s public servants.
However, under Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban has pursued a far more extreme and ideological regime centred around imposing a stricter Islamic state.
Taliban officials initially claimed girls would continue receiving an education, creating cautious hope that restrictions would be temporary. Instead, women’s rights rapidly deteriorated, with 54 of the Taliban’s 80 edicts within its first two years of rule specifically targeting women. By September 2021, girls had been barred from attending secondary schools, and although the Taliban pledged to reopen classrooms amid widespread international pressure, the decision was reversed only hours before students were due to return. By December 2022, women had also been banned from universities, while subsequent decrees restricted their employment, travel and access to public spaces.
Restrictions initially posed as temporary have now become the norm, with not a single decree restricting women’s rights being repealed in the four years of Taliban’s rule.
PHOTO: Prior to Taliban rule, Afghan girls would attend class outdoors in Paktya Province, Captain John Severns, US Air Force on Wikimedia Commons
The Taliban’s justification
To many observers, the Taliban’s restrictions on women appear impossible to justify. Yet for the Taliban’s leadership, these measures have been deemed necessary to uphold their interpretation of Islamic law. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid stated that under these edicts, women have now found their “rightful place” under a Sharia-based system, claiming that the previous government “had deprived them” of these values. These are the beliefs of the same officials who have ordered the removal of windows from homes and banned women from singing or speaking to prevent their voices from being heard outside. Taliban leaders have justified such drastic measures by arguing that women being seen or heard is a “moral violation”, as it could “tempt men into obscene acts” and “vice”. Through the Taliban’s lens, these policies are not viewed as discrimination, but as religious obligations designed to preserve social order.
However, the Taliban’s position is far from universally accepted, even within their own regime. While Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada has continued to tighten restrictions on women’s rights, several senior Taliban figures have publicly criticised his actions. Former Deputy Foreign Minister, Sher Mohammed Abbas Stanikzai, stated that denying girls’ education was an act “straying from the path of God,” while others have reportedly resisted efforts to further restrict access to online education services by turning communication services back on during a nationwide internet shut down.
These divisions reveal an important reality often lost in discussions about Afghanistan: the exclusion of women from education and public life is not a policy with unanimous support from the Afghan community or even among all Taliban officials. According to a 2025 UN Women report, 92 per cent of Afghan families support girls continuing their education beyond primary school. Yet despite the growing resistance and disapproval, the power to determine the future of millions of Afghan women remains concentrated in the hands of a small group of religious leaders loyal to Akhundzada.
Expansion of restrictions on women’s life
For many, education is not merely about literacy or qualifications; it is a fundamental human right that acts as the cornerstone for independence, social mobility and the opportunity to build a better future. By denying girls access to education, the Taliban are “committing an injustice against 20 million people”, as reported by the former Foreign Minister Stanikzai. It is an injustice that has transcended beyond education and into nearly every aspect of public life for women.
Women have been prohibited from working with NGOs, using public spaces, including parks and gyms, and travelling long distances without a male guardian. The need for male guardians has been reinforced throughout numerous Taliban edicts. Without one, women are denied entry to health centres, refused service at coffee shops and restricted from even leaving their homes without risking severe punishment. For women without male guardians the consequences can be devastating. In a country where women are barred from education and employment, yet still expected to financially survive, they are left with no choice but to beg. Notably, begging has become one of the few forms of visibility still permitted to women, who now make up the largest proportion of beggars across the city.
PHOTO: An Afghan woman holds a child while begging in Kabul, Nasim Fekrat on Wikimedia Commons
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In effect, the Taliban’s ban can no longer be viewed as an isolated policy targeting schools alone, but rather as activists have described, “a wave of repression” that UN experts warn should constitute a crime against humanity.
The Taliban’s system of gender apartheid
Collectively, these decrees have led many Afghan activists and human rights organisations to describe the Taliban’s system as a form of “gender apartheid”, a term used to describe the “systemic oppression, discrimination and segregation of a group based on a gender.” Unlike temporary policies introduced during periods of instability, the increasingly entrenched restrictions on women’s rights have raised the question of gender apartheid under Taliban’s rule.
Initially directives targeting education banned women from pursuing subjects such as engineering and journalism on the basis they were “too difficult for women”, a justification that reflected not protection, but the suppression of choice and opportunity. The decrees intensified further when women employed by the Ministry of Finance were ordered to send a male relative to perform their duties in order to be paid. These men, regardless of their expertise or qualifications were then automatically appointed, underscoring that the Taliban’s policy was never about competence or economic necessity, but the deliberate removal of women from public life.
The regime’s policies have since extended beyond exclusion and into erasure, with orders for the removal of windows from homes to ensure women are not seen from outside. Such drastic measures, with equally severe consequences, reflect the systemic suppression and segregation of women that remains consistent with gender apartheid.
Although gender apartheid has yet to be formally recognised as a crime against humanity under international law, for Afghan women it is already a lived reality. The question is no longer whether it exists, but how long the international community will take to recognise it.
The human cost of banning education
The UN has reported that 2.2 million girls have been denied their chance at secondary education. As a result, nearly 80% of young women aged 18-29 are no longer in education, employment or training in Afghanistan.
Behind these statistics are the lived consequences of the Taliban’s restrictions, which have reshaped a generation of women’s futures.
PHOTO: Girls attending an informal classroom in Afghanistan, The Advocacy Project on Flickr
Roya, a teacher and one of the last women to graduate before universities closed, told SBS that the “Taliban didn’t just take away my job… they took away my identity”. Her words reflect the experiences of many Afghan women, for whom education represented not only an opportunity, but friendship, purpose and a safe space away from everyday hardships.
However, now the closure of schools has left Roya to watch as many of her students are pushed to early marriage, taken out of classes and left with little hope of a future in education. Their experiences capture the broader human cost of a system that has increasingly confined women to the domestic sphere while reducing their presence within public life itself.
The issue is therefore no longer simply whether Afghan girls can attend school, but whether women can participate equally in a society where they enjoy the same opportunities, freedoms and dreams as everyone else.
A Beacon of Hope
While the Taliban continue tightening restrictions across Afghanistan, many women have continued searching for ways to remain educated and connected to public life. In Herat, 22-year-old Khadija Ahmadzada was imprisoned for 13 days in violation of running a women’s sports gym. At the time, Taliban officials claimed gyms would reopen to women once a “safe environment” aligned with their interpretation of Islamic law had been established. However, as of January 2026, sports clubs for women remain closed, reinforcing how restrictions initially framed as temporary have become increasingly permanent realities. Any attempts of resistance are often met with intimidation and arrest, as Ahmadzada herself had only been released after Richard Bennet, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights, had publicly called for an immediate release.
Against the odds
Across the country, despite the severe consequences posed, Afghan women have continued building alternative ways to access their rights and freedoms. Hidden classrooms now operate inside private homes and underground basements, while online lessons connect girls from different provinces. These classes may not be actual schools and may not issue formal certificates, but these classes act as a lifeline for many female students.
Asma, a young Afghan student denied secondary schooling after the Taliban’s takeover joined a hidden English language centre run quietly for girls. Within a year, she had achieved excellent results and began teaching girls her own age and younger. Despite the barriers placed around her, Asma has now been accepted for an online Bachelor of Business Administration program run by a university in the United States. Her story reflects the hope and determination shared by many Afghan girls, who continue finding ways to learn and imagine futures beyond the Taliban’s restrictions.
Four and a half years on, Afghan women have not stopped learning, dreaming or resisting. Yet the future of millions of Afghan girls remains uncertain, defined not only by what has been taken from them, but by what they are still fighting to preserve.
