Womens Rights in Afghanistan

On September 27, 1996, the Taliban seized control of the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, and violently plunged the occupied territories of Afghanistan into a brutal state of gender apartheid in which women and girls have been stripped of their basic human rights(“The Taliban & Afghan Women” 1). In 1997, Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Abbas Stanakzai acknowledged that repression of women was a political tool to consolidate power. "Our current restrictions of women are necessary in order to bring …

…women, who had been the majority of the country's workforce and of its population, were barred from employment outside the home and prohibited from attending secondary school, driving vehicles or appearing in public without male escorts and the all-covering burqa. Women were placed under house arrest, deprived of health care and education, and made totally dependent upon male relatives, suffering beatings, sexual assault or even execution if they violated the bans(Afghanistan’s Women Today).