status of women

Before the Taliban

Although women were treated as second class citizens under the Taliban, they enjoyed a fairly significant amount of freedom during the twentieth century. They received the right to vote in the 1920’s and gained improving social and political status and opportunities.

In 1978, a revolution took place in which the ruling government was overthrown and its leader, Mohammad Daoud was killed. The revolutionary government was communist and introduced policies that were not based around religion. New laws that were brought in reduced the influence of Mosques, banned women from wearing the Burqa and the ordered men to cut their beards.

The communist government allowed more rights for women and a ban was also placed on forced marriages. This move was actually unpopular with many people in rural areas, who were in favour of a curtailment of women’s rights in accordance with their perception of Islamic law.

Women under the Taliban

The Taliban did not treat women well and they imposed a lot of rules on them. Under an extremely hard-line and strict interpretation of Islam, the Taliban moved quickly to reduce women’s rights. Although their strict version of Islam was rejected by the wider global Muslim community as Islamic teachings actually champion women’s rights and equality, the Taliban claimed they were in fact protecting women and offering them the freedom accorded to them by the Koran. Because of this many have argued that they had warped and twisted the Koran’s teachings.

One of the first things the Taliban did was ban women from working, believing that a woman’s place was firmly in the home. This had a number of effects. Many women were the only earners in a household after their husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles etc were killed during the Soviet-Afghan war of the 1980’s. This meant many women and their children were thrown into poverty. The Taliban also imposed restrictions on women’s movements. Women were forbidden from being in public or from getting in a taxi without a close male relative. This severely restricted women who had lost all or most of their close male relatives in the conflict. The punishments for disobeying this rule, even if a woman needed to take her child to the doctors, or needed treatment herself, were harsh. Women were beaten on the spot by the Taliban’s moral police, and often beaten so hard they were unable to move for long periods of time. Public flogging and executions for more serious crimes were common.

The enforced ban on women and men mixing in public went to the extremes whereby male doctors could only examine female patients if they were fully clothed – this led to severely restricted access to good healthcare for women as a proper diagnosis was often impossible for a doctor.

The ban on women and men mixing also meant that women were forbidden from appearing on their balconies, and ground floor windows were painted over, so that no man could see the woman inside her own home. In addition to the ban on women being out alone was the enforcement of the burqa. Covering women from head to toe, the burqa, with its mesh panel for seeing, was a health and safety hazard when carrying out day to day activities such as crossing a busy road.

The Taliban were an extremely anti-modern, anti-Western group, and banned most forms of entertainment, they even banned children from flying kites. Women displaying any signs of westernization, such as nail varnish would be severely punished. Aside from being banned from work, females over the age of eight were banned from attending school. A number of underground schools were established to carry on the now illegal education of girls and women.