Under their regime, all university classes must be segregated.
The Taliban’s new higher education minister has banned Afghan women from studying alongside men at university.
After they took over the country last month, the Taliban said that they would implement less extreme rules than 1996-2001 Taliban rule. However, their new ban on mixed-gender education in Afghanistan contradicts this claim.
Minister Abdul Baqi Haqqani said at a press conference that the country has “no problems in ending the mixed-education system” and said that the people will “accept it”.
He told reporters: “We will not allow boys and girls to study together. We will not allow co-education.”
The new ban will only allow Afghan women to attend university if they wear an abaya, a niqab and only if their classes are segregated by sex, or divided by a curtain.
There are a number of concerns over the ban, particularly from universities where it’s not feesible for classes to be divided according to sex due to a lack of resources.
Mr Haqqani, however, claimed that women’s education could still continue. He said that there were plenty of female teachers available, and that alternative solutions could be used in certain circumstances.
He said: “It all depends on the university’s capacity. We can also use male teachers to teach from behind a curtain, or use technology.”
Before the Taliban’s takeover, Afghan women were allowed to attend university classes alongside men. They also did not have to conform to any dress code. In fact, the number of women enrolled in higher education in the country was at a record high. A number of institutions, including Herat University and Ghalib University had more female students than male students.
The Taliban’s full agenda has yet to be made clear, though they have claimed that their new framework would be more respectful of the rights of women and girls. This came with the stipulation that their rights would be delivered within an “Islamic framework”. Recently, the Taliban spokesman Sayed Zekrullah Hashimi told an interviewer that the role of women in Afghanistan is to give birth and raise children.
