Gender Apartheid, The Return of the Taliban and the Rollback of Women’s Rights
When the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, many Afghan women feared a repetition of the 1990s. What has unfolded since, however, is not merely a restoration of past restrictions but a deepening and formalisation of gender-based control that is more systematic, more codified and more expansive than before.
Over the past several years, the Taliban has issued more than one hundred decrees regulating women’s education, employment, movement, dress and participation in public life. Secondary education for girls was suspended. Universities were closed to women. Female civil servants were dismissed. Women were banned from most employment sectors, including work with non-governmental organisations and international bodies. Public parks, gyms and sports facilities were closed to women. Beauty salons—one of the last women-run economic spaces—were shuttered.
Layer by layer, women were removed from visibility.
The effect is not simply social conservatism. It is legal rollback. Prior gains made in the two decades following 2001—including access to education, participation in parliament, and legal protections against violence—have been dismantled. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where girls are legally barred from secondary and higher education.
The question is no longer whether women’s rights have regressed. It is how to accurately describe the system that has replaced them.
Check here to read more of my articles on Gender Equality and Afghanistan.
Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan
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What Is Gender Apartheid?
The term “gender apartheid” is not a slogan. It is an analytical and increasingly legal concept.
Apartheid, under international law, refers to an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one group over another. It is codified as a crime against humanity in response to racial apartheid in South Africa. The legal definition currently specifies racial groups, but the structural elements—systematic segregation, economic exclusion, legalised domination and state enforcement—are not inherently racial in nature.
Gender apartheid applies those same structural criteria to systems organised around sex-based domination. It describes a regime in which one gender group is legally subordinated to another through institutional design, enforced dependency and the deliberate removal of rights.
This is not simply discrimination. Discrimination can occur within otherwise participatory systems. Gender apartheid describes governance in which exclusion is the organising principle.
Why Afghanistan Meets the Definition
Since 2021, Afghanistan has developed the defining characteristics of such a regime.
Women are excluded from secondary and higher education by law. Without education, access to professional training, political participation and long-term economic independence is eliminated.
Women are prohibited from most employment. The ban extends beyond government positions to humanitarian and international organisations. Economic dependence on male relatives is therefore structurally enforced.
Women cannot travel freely without a male guardian. Their mobility is legally contingent upon male approval. Access to healthcare, employment and even family networks is mediated through this requirement.
Public space has been redefined as male space. Parks, gyms and recreational facilities are closed to women. Directives restrict women’s voices in public settings. Dress codes are enforced through morality authorities.
These measures do not operate in isolation. They interlock.
Education bans ensure dependency. Employment bans guarantee economic control. Mobility restrictions reinforce surveillance. Dress enforcement ensures physical conformity. Public-space exclusions remove visibility.
This is institutional design.
The New Criminal Code and the Private Sphere
The consolidation of gender control did not stop at public exclusion. In 2026, the Taliban replaced Afghanistan’s criminal framework, repealing earlier legal protections and narrowing accountability for domestic abuse.
The 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law, which once provided legal avenues for women experiencing abuse, was effectively dismantled. Under the revised system, domestic violence is treated narrowly, evidentiary burdens are placed on women, and broad discretionary authority remains with husbands within the household.
The consequence is not merely weakened protection but structural reinforcement of male authority in the private sphere. Psychological abuse, coercive control and non-physical violence are not meaningfully criminalised. Women’s ability to seek legal redress is severely limited by mobility restrictions and the absence of independent access to courts.
If earlier decrees erased women from public life, the revised criminal code restructures the domestic sphere to align with the same hierarchy.
Gender domination is thus embedded both publicly and privately.
More Fundamentalist Than Before
Observers often compare the current regime to the Taliban’s first period of rule in the 1990s. While the ideological foundations are similar, the present system is arguably more administratively entrenched.
Today’s Taliban governs through formalised bureaucratic decrees, codified policies and regulatory frameworks that extend into education, employment, media, transport and criminal law. The mechanisms of control are layered and legalised, rather than solely enforced through informal coercion.
This creates durability.
What was once framed as temporary or culturally contextual has become institutional.
The Present Reality for Afghan Women
For Afghan women and girls, daily life is defined by constraint.
A girl grows up knowing her education will end at puberty. A university student who once aspired to become a surgeon is sent home indefinitely. A widow cannot work legally in many sectors. A mother cannot travel freely to seek medical treatment without male accompaniment.
Public identity contracts. Professional ambition dissolves. Social participation narrows.
The psychological toll is profound. Reports indicate rising depression, anxiety and suicide among women facing confinement and enforced dependency. Economic marginalisation compounds humanitarian crises. Skilled female professionals—especially in healthcare and education—are absent from systems that desperately need them.
Half the population is structurally underutilised.
Generational Consequences
The long-term impact extends beyond individual women.
A generation of girls denied education will enter adulthood without literacy, professional skills or economic autonomy. Intergenerational poverty deepens when mothers lack access to education and income. Public institutions weaken when female participation disappears from governance, medicine, teaching and civil service.
Societies that exclude women from civic and economic life diminish their own capacity for development.
Gender apartheid does not only harm women. It restructures the entire social order around enforced hierarchy.
Why Naming Gender Apartheid Matters
The debate over recognising gender apartheid in international law is ongoing. Some argue that existing categories such as gender persecution are sufficient. Others contend that without explicitly naming systematic gender-based domination, accountability remains incomplete.
Naming is not symbolic. Legal classification determines prosecutability, diplomatic pressure and international response.
Whether or not the term is formally codified, the structural reality in Afghanistan is clear. The defining elements of apartheid—systematic oppression, institutionalisation and intent to maintain domination—are present.
Afghanistan has not simply restricted women’s rights.
It has redesigned the state around their exclusion.
And that design, if sustained, will shape generations.
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References
- Amnesty International. “Global: Gender apartheid must be recognized as a crime under international law.” (2024).
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/06/gender-apartheid-must-be-recognized-international-law/ - Atlantic Council. “Gender apartheid is a horror. Now the United Nations can make it a crime against humanity.”
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/gender-apartheid-is-a-horror-now-the-united-nations-can-make-it-a-crime-against-humanity/ - End Gender Apartheid Campaign. Campaign materials and proposed legal framework.
https://endgenderapartheid.today/ - Human Rights Watch. World Report 2026: Afghanistan.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/afghanistan - Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). “Treaty on crimes against humanity: States must give Afghan women a central voice and recognise gender apartheid.” (2026).
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/01/treaty-crimes-against-humanity-states-must-give-afghan-women-central-voice - Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). “Iran’s proposed hijab law could amount to ‘gender apartheid’: UN experts.” (2023).
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/09/irans-proposed-hijab-law-could-amount-gender-apartheid-un-experts - Nobel Peace Center. “Gender Apartheid must be declared a crime.”
https://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/en/news/gender-apartheid-must-be-declared-a-crime - The Guardian. “What is gender apartheid – and can anything be done to stop it?”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/oct/09/what-is-gender-apartheid-activists-international-law-women-girls-rights-afghanistan-iran - Just Security. “Misogynist Apartheid — Saudi Arabia’s Original Human Rights Sin.”
https://www.justsecurity.org/61442/misogynist-apartheid-saudi-arabias-original-human-rights-sin/ - Ms. Magazine. “Fleeing Gender Apartheid.”
https://msmagazine.com/2019/08/02/fleeing-gender-apartheid/
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