Discipline and Domination: The Taliban’s Rule Over Women as Statecraft

Over the last four years, Afghanistan has been seeing an unprecedented level of decline in the domains of women’s education, right to work, and access to essential services-including fairness in the eyes of the law-due to the Taliban’s regressive policies. Although Afghanistan is no longer on the global news headlines, the country is still facing a multi-dimensional humanitarian crisis and is led by a government without political legitimacy-given that the Taliban fighters assumed power through a political deal known as the Doha Agreement-whose policies limiting women have drawn immense international scrutiny. Since the Taliban’s resurgence in August 2021, this predicament only seems to worsen with time. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), which is the political system led by the Taliban, enforces its unique interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law) and makes false justifications about the Afghan cultural norms while imposing strict gender norms that denies women’s access to most fundamental services such as education above the secondary school, working in public offices, political or even socio-cultural representation, This article presents an overview of the Taliban’s discriminatory rule against women and their crackdown on women and civil liberties. It examines the motivations behind imposing such stringent directives as a form of public authority enforcement. The Taliban’s Historical Stance on Women Before 1996, the Taliban was a small movement with limited influence only in some regions of Afghanistan.

Key findings

• Restrictions on women’s work and education compound economic hardship for entire households.
• Humanitarian access depends increasingly on local negotiation and trusted intermediaries.
• Programmes designed with communities are more resilient to sudden policy change.

Recommendations

Donors and implementing partners should invest in long-term, flexible funding, prioritise the participation of women in programme design, and support local research capacity so that evidence continues to inform decisions.