Exclusive | 'We can't serve our family, nation': Why Women's Day held little significance in Afghanistan
Afghan women under Taliban
International Women's Day meant little to Zareena (name changed) on March 8th this year. But speaking from Kabul, she still wished WION well on Women’s Day, hoping that her voice will make a difference to the current state of women in Afghanistan living under Taliban's rule.
Months after the Taliban hardliners denied Zareena and millions of other Afghan women the right to study and work, the 24-year-old law graduate from Kabul feels more helpless than ever, now that "enough time" has passed.
On December 21, 2022, when the Taliban banned women from attending universities, Zareena was scheduled to appear in an exam for a diploma course at Silo Road in Kabul. While her foreign language diploma was disrupted by Taliban administration's "new rules", she still had a degree in law to hope for a salaried job.
"I cannot pursue my goals and ambitions because of the Taliban," Zareena told WION earlier in December 2022.
Three months later, little has changed for Zareena and millions of Afghan women like her. In fact, the Taliban's onslaught of women's rights has taken a more aggressive turn.
At the time of filing this report, the Taliban diktat that women aid workers can no longer work in Afghanistan remains imposed despite global uproar against it.
WION first reported in January 2023 when theTaliban-ruled in Balkh province that male doctors can no longer treat female patients.
On January 30, 2023, young female students were stopped from appearing in university entrance exams across the country.
Earlier this week, schools and universities reopened across Afghanistan after winter break but only for men. The visuals showing female students protesting to demand their right to study inside classrooms went viral worldwide. But while remarks were made in the diplomatic enclaves of New York and Geneva where key United Nations organs are headquartered, there was no noise of urgency.
"If women could study and have jobs in Afghanistan, they could do away with all their problems," Zareena told WION in a phone interview from Kabul on March 8th, referring to the women-only households of the war-torn country, where the expenses were previously borne by women working outside the household which no more is the case.
"But without a job, I can't do anything for myself, my family or my country," Zareena added, while reflecting on her months of job hunts in the Afghan capital, where she says, women are being denied jobs because of the "new rules" imposed by the Taliban hardliners.
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Asked what message she has for the rest of the world, Zareena referred to the mental distress Taliban's anti-women tyranny is causing to Afghan women.
"Women of Afghanistan need jobs. We need to study to live a good life. We cannot do any job we want," she said.
Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, the country has become the most repressive in the world for women and girls, deprived of many of their basic rights, the United Nations said on Wednesday. About 11.6 million Afghan women and girls are in need of humanitarian assistance, estimates say, depicting the current statusof Zareena and her fellow Afghan female compatriots.
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