Afghan women should not be allowed to work alongside men, a senior figure in the ruling Taliban said, a position which, if formally implemented, would effectively bar them from employment in government offices, banks, media companies and beyond. Women should also be allowed to study and work in the education and medical sectors, where separate facilities can be set up for their exclusive use.
“We will of course need women, for example in medicine, in education. We will have separate institutions for them, separate hospitals, separate universities maybe, separate schools, separate madrassas.
On Sunday, the Taliban’s new education minister said women could study at university, but must be segregated from men. Women have staged several protests across Afghanistan, demanding that the rights they won over the last two decades be preserved. Some rallies have been broken up by Taliban gunmen firing shots into the air.
Improved women’s rights – more noticeable in urban centres than deeply conservative rural areas – were repeatedly cited by the United States as one of the biggest successes of its 20-year operation in the country that officially ended on Aug. 31.
The female labour participation rate stood at 23% in 2020, according to the World Bank, up from effectively zero when the Taliban last ruled.
Source: Reuters
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