The Guardian view on Afghanistan’s gender apartheid: don’t embolden the Taliban

‘The Taliban’s institutionalized gender oppression is depriving Afghanistan of its future female engineers, journalists, lawyers, biologists, politicians and poets,’ noted Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan. Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

Women barely feature in Hollywoodgate, the chilling and remarkable documentary on the Taliban currently showing in selected cinemas. Three years after their fighters marched back into Kabul in August 2021, this absence tells its own story of systematic marginalisation and subjugation.

The Taliban’s war against girls and women has intensified. Deprived of education, work and even the opportunity to walk in parks or visit public baths, half of Afghanistan’s population live especially shrunken and fearful lives. The Taliban’s rule is not merely a cruel and humiliating blow to their rights and dignity, but an existential threat. In a May report, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, quoted one woman: “I was the breadwinner and now [I] have no job, no income and my children are asking for food, I have no choice but to consider suicide.”