Four Years On: Total Exclusion of Afghan Women Today

A Taliban edict prevents women and girls from attending secondary school or pursuing higher education.

In 2021, an Afghan woman could have run for president – although none did. Fast forward to 2025, and they can’t even speak in public. There is an edict from the Taliban that labels public speaking by women as a moral violation.

Four years after Taliban fighters retook the capital, Kabul, on 15 August 2021, the gender equality agency UN Women is warning that the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan is increasingly untenable.

Without urgent action, this untenable reality will become normalised, and women and girls will be fully excluded.

“The Taliban is closer than ever to achieving its vision of a society that completely erases women from public life,” UN Women said in a press release on Monday.

The edicts passed by the Taliban restricting women’s and girls’ rights interact to create an inescapable cycle that confines women to private spaces and increases their vulnerability.

In most cases, including for humanitarian workers, women are not allowed to move freely in public without being accompanied by a mahram, or male guardian. The Taliban has also banned women and girls from secondary and higher education.

Taken together, these edicts have profound ramifications at all levels of society. Now, not only is it functionally impossible for women to receive educational degrees, it is also unduly difficult for them to get jobs and enter training programmes.

As a result, over 78 per cent of Afghan women are not in education, employment, or training.

This means that almost half of the workforce is not contributing to the economy in measurable ways—a huge problem for a country whose economy has been devastated by sanctions and climate shocks.

But it’s not just the economy that is suffering. In some cases, these edicts can literally be a matter of life or death.

“The results are devastating. Women are living shorter, less healthy lives,” the UN agency said.

Take healthcare, for instance. If women are not allowed to enter higher education, they cannot become doctors. And if women are banned from receiving treatment from male doctors—which they are in certain regions—they cannot expect to live healthy lives.

UN Women estimates that impediments to healthcare for women in Afghanistan will increase maternal mortality by 50 per cent by 2026.

Child marriage is also becoming more common, and women are increasingly subjected to violence, both inside and outside their homes.

It is not just in public that women’s voices are being excluded—62 per cent of women feel they cannot even influence decisions at home.

UN Women emphasises that despite having little to hope for, Afghan women remain resilient. They continue to seek moments of solidarity and hope for a different future.

One woman whose grassroots leadership organisation lost all of its funding in 2022 continues to support women in smaller ways.

“I will continue to stand strong as a woman, supporting other Afghan women. I go to remote areas and collect [women’s] stories, listen to their problems, and this gives them hope. I try my best, and that also gives me hope,” she said.

Since 2021, almost 100 edicts restricting how women and girls move through society have been instituted and enforced. In four years, not a single one has been overturned.

Susan Ferguson, UN Women’s representative in Afghanistan, said this lack of progress must be understood beyond the Afghan context.

“This is not only about the rights—and futures—of Afghan women and girls. It’s about what we stand for as a global community,” Ms Ferguson said.

“If we allow Afghan women and girls to be silenced, we send a message that the rights of women and girls everywhere are disposable. And that’s an immensely dangerous precedent.”