The interim mayor of Afghanistan's capital claims that the country's new Taliban authorities have ordered many female municipal workers to remain at home.
Women Who Cannot Be Replaced by Men Are the Only Ones Permitted To Work
In a recently published article in Newsweek, only women who could not be substituted by men were allowed to report to work, according to Hamdullah Namony, who spoke to media on Sunday. This, he claims, includes professional employees in design and engineering departments, as well as female attendants of women's public restrooms.
Despite their early pledges of tolerance and inclusion, the Taliban are imposing their severe interpretation of Islam, including limitations on women in public life, as shown by Namony's remarks. Girls and women were banned from schools and employment under the Taliban's prior reign in the 1990s.
The interim mayor said that a final decision on female workers in Kabul municipal agencies is still pending, but they will be paid while they wait. Prior to the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan last month, he claims that women made up just under one third of the city's 3,000 workers, working in all departments, according to a published article in Associated Press.
Taliban Scaling Back the Rights and Freedom of Afghan Women
The Taliban replaced the Ministry of Women's Affairs with the Ministries of Prayer and Guidance, as well as the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, on Friday. The Taliban's version of Islamic morality and law will be enforced by the new ministry.
According to a news outlet, a dozen women demonstrated briefly outside the ministry on Sunday, asking for participation in public life in response to the Taliban's new restrictions. "A society in which women are not participating is a dying society," one placard said.
Since the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban have been restricting women's and girls' rights and freedoms, with some of the new restrictions mirroring those in place when the Taliban were in power from 1996 and 2001. Women and girls were barred from school and employment during the time, according to a report published in The Guardian.
Education in Afghanistan
The Taliban's education minister stated on Friday that all male instructors and pupils from grades six through twelve would return to class without regard for female students. Girls are now permitted to continue their education through the sixth grade.
Teen females were not permitted to return to school after the minister's statement, according to The Wall Street Journal. According to the article, the Taliban are planning to explore female adolescent education; but they did not tell when women will be allowed to return to high school.
Women may continue to pursue higher education at colleges, according to the Taliban; but they must attend gender-segregated classes while wearing a headscarf, and they will be separated by a curtain within the classroom, the Taliban said last September 12.
Abdul Baqi Haqqani, the Taliban's higher education minister, stated at the time that the Taliban would begin expanding on what was already in place and that boys and girls would not be allowed to study together. They will not allow co-education, according to Haqqani, since it violates sharia law.
