Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan: How the Taliban Systematically Erased Women
Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, Afghanistan has undergone one of the most extreme rollbacks of women’s rights in modern history. Girls are barred from secondary school, women are excluded from universities and most employment, and public space has been redefined as male territory.
But what exists today is not merely discrimination. Increasingly, legal scholars and UN experts are calling it something more precise: gender apartheid — a system of institutionalised domination that may meet the structural threshold of a crime against humanity.
This article examines how Afghanistan’s new legal framework, including the revised criminal code, has reshaped both public and private life for women — and what this means for future generations.
