Women's rights being eroded globally

From Iraq to Afghanistan to the US, basic freedoms for women are being eroded as governments start rolling back existing laws.

- HIND ELHINNAWY

Just a few months ago, a ban on Afghan women speaking in public was the latest measure introduced by the Taliban, who took back control of the country in 2021. From August, the ban included singing, reading aloud, reciting poetry, and even laughing outside their homes.

The Taliban's ministry for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice, which implements one of the most radical interpretations of Islamic law, enforces these rules. They are part of a broader set of "vice and virtue" laws that severely restrict women's rights and freedoms.

Women are even banned from reading the Quran out loud to other women in public.

In the past three years in Afghanistan, the Taliban has taken away many basic rights from women who live there, so that there's very little that they are allowed to do.

From 2021, the Taliban started introducing restrictions on girls receiving education, starting with a ban on co-education and then a ban on girls attending secondary schools.

This was followed by closing blind girls' schools in 2023, and making it mandatory for girls in grades four to six (ages nine to 12) to cover their faces on the way to school.

Women can no longer attend universities or receive a degree certificate nationally, or follow midwifery or nursing training in the Kandahar region.

Women are no longer allowed to be flight attendants, or to take a job outside the home.

Women-run bakeries in the capital Kabul have now been banned.

Women are mostly now unable to earn any money, or leave their homes.

In April 2024, the Taliban in Helmand province told media outlets to even refrain from airing women's voices.