Women in Afghanistan

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Women’s Rights in Afghanistan Afghanistan is one of the worst countries to be a woman. Girls’ schools are frequently attacked, high-profile women’s rights advocates have been targeted and killed, and violence against girls and women continues to be a major problem (“Women in Afghanistan”). More females die during pregnancies and childbirth than almost anywhere else in the world. Life is hard for women fighting for their rights in Afghanistan. The Taliban, an extremist militia, seized control first of Herat and then Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, on September 27, 1996 and violently plunged Afghanistan into a brutal state of totalitarian dictatorship and gender apartheid in which women and girls were stripped of their basic human rights. Upon seizing power, the Taliban regime instituted a system of gender apartheid effectively thrusting the women into a state of virtual house arrest. Under Taliban rule, women were stripped of all human rights – their work, visibility, opportunity for education, voice, healthcare, and mobility. When they took control in 1996, the Taliban initially imposed strict commands that banished women from work force. They closed schools to girls and women and expelled women from universities. The Taliban prohibited women from leaving their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative. They also went as far as to ordering the publicly visible windows of women’s houses painted black and forced women to wear the burqa (or chadari) – which completely covers the body, leaving only a small mesh-covered opening so that they will be able to see. They prohibited women and girls from being examined by male physicians while at the same time prohibited female doctors and nurses from working. Women were brutally beaten, publicly flogged, and killed for violating Taliban decrees. In Kabul and other cities, a few home schools for girls operated

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