It has been more than four years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan and reshaped the country’s administrative system, introducing sweeping legal changes, particularly affecting women.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, women and girls in Afghanistan have faced escalating restrictions, especially on education, movement and working.
After seizing control of Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban government first restricted girls’ education beyond sixth grade, and in December 2022 extended the ban to include all universities, cutting off women from tertiary study, including medical school pathways.
Medical and healthcare courses, including nursing and midwifery, had remained among the few educational routes still accessible to women after the university ban. Many women changed their majors and chose to study in healthcare sector to be able to pursue higher learning. Midwifery and nursing training had been particularly important given Afghanistan’s extreme shortage of trained female healthcare workers and one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with approximately 638 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.¹
However, in December 2024, Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada issued a directive through the Ministry of Public Health closing medical institutes to women, effectively barring them from medical, nursing, midwifery, and related professional training in both public and private institutions.
This decision shut down one of the last remaining pathways to higher education for women and prevented them from entering essential health professions such as doctor, nurse, midwife, lab technician, and other clinical roles.
The prohibition covered medical schools, nursing education, midwifery courses, and related health sciences training. Without access to these programs, young women are no longer able to enter professions such as doctor, nurse, midwife, lab technician, or other essential roles in the health sector.
Although the ban was conveyed as temporary to allow time to create new protocols to prevent cross-gender contact and ensure compliance with Islamic rules, the ban on secondary education has continued for more than four years now.
The prohibition has created a dire situation for young women and girls. According to the current rules, the highest possible education for a woman in Afghanistan is graduating from the sixth grade. UNICEF estimates that more than 2.2 million girls have been deprived of education due to bans on secondary and higher schooling.²
Despite the ban, a few provinces allow girls to pursue secondary school education, but reports suggest lower attendance even in primary schools and deepening exclusion from education.³
The Taliban has framed the ban as a religious and cultural necessity, citing concerns over gender mixing in educational institutions and healthcare settings.
By closing medical institutes to women, the Taliban effectively removed the last socially acceptable professional pathway for Afghan women under its own rules.
The ban has critical implications for healthcare access in Afghanistan, particularly for female patients.
Under current Taliban directives, male medical staff are prohibited from treating women unless accompanied by a male relative, making female providers essential for delivering care, especially in conservative areas where women are culturally restricted from seeing male doctors.
Under the decree, male doctors are prohibited from touching female patients even during consultation, which makes most medical procedures impossible to perform, as well as dental care.
Before the ban, midwives and female nurses played a crucial role in maternal and reproductive health. Afghanistan already had extremely high maternal mortality and infant mortality, and the loss of new female medical graduates threatens further deterioration.⁴ The current number of female healthcare workers is highly insufficient as the pipeline for training has been closed.⁵
According to UNICEF, Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with thousands of Afghan women dying every year from pregnancy-related causes that are often preventable. ⁶
Health care for women is further compromised by male escort rules that delay emergency treatment and contribute to avoidable maternal and infant deaths.⁷
According to Human Rights Without Frontiers, in February 2023 the Taliban banned the sale of contraception in pharmacies. This, combined with high rates of child marriage, has resulted in increased maternal and infant mortality rates.
Groups like Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have noted that excluding women from medical education undermines the future of the healthcare system, as female staff make up a substantial portion of clinical teams, including half of MSF’s workforce in Afghanistan.
Heather Barr, Associate Director of the Women’s Rights Division, Human Rights Watch told The Guardian, "If you ban women from being treated by male healthcare professionals, and then you ban women from training to become healthcare professionals, the consequences are clear: women will not have access to healthcare and will die as a result.”
Despite restrictions, Afghan women have found some ways to continue learning. Some pursue online courses and participate in underground education efforts disguised as sewing classes, including home-based classes and remote learning programs, though these options remain limited and fraught with risk. If discovered, women risk severe punishment under Taliban rule.
International bodies, including the United Nations human rights office, have condemned the ban on women’s medical training, warning that it threatens both women’s rights and the broader healthcare system in Afghanistan.
UN officials and human rights experts have described the restrictions as amounts of “gender apartheid,” a form of systematic oppression against women and girls.⁸
As of early 2026, women in Afghanistan remain barred from universities, medical institutes, and related healthcare education, with no official timeline for reversal.
Women are increasingly trying to pressure the Taliban through International support to provide a timeline for the reversal of the prohibitions.
The tension between cultural norms restricting male practitioners from treating female patients and the absence of new female healthcare workers poses a complex challenge for the country’s healthcare infrastructure.
This continued exclusion of women from education and training and eventually from healthcare access, raises dangerous concerns like gender apartheid, a term used by UN and human rights experts to describe the systemic discrimination and segregation of women’s rights.⁹
UNICEF, Health | UNICEF Afghanistan, accessed January 2026, https://www.unicef.org/afghanistan/health.
UNICEF Press Release, As new school year starts in Afghanistan, almost 400,000 more girls deprived of their right, March 21, 2025, https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/new-school-year-starts-afghanistan-almost-400000-more-girls-deprived-their-right.
“UNICEF Calls on the Taliban to Lift Ban on Girls’ Education as New School Year Begins in Afghanistan,” Associated Press, January 29, 2026, https://www.apnews.com/article/afghanistan-unicef-taliban-ban-girls-education-54930502f36c3b24c042b79fc30c5fa4.
“Health Care and Birth Outcomes in Afghanistan: OB-GYN,” Minnesota Department of Health, February 3, 2025, https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/rih/coe/clinical/obafghan/inafghan.html.
PMC NCBI article on policy impact, The Impact of Afghanistan's Policies… (2025).
UNICEF, March 21, 2025, https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/new-school-year-starts-afghanistan-almost-400000-more-girls-deprived-their-right
“I begged them, my daughter was dying”: how Taliban male escort rules are killing mothers and babies,” The Guardian, April 3, 2025.
United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/56/25), May 13, 2024.
UN press release on “gender apartheid,” Excluded from Education… June 21, 2023.
Sharma, Umang. “Afghanistan: Taliban ‘Ban’ Contraceptives for Women, ‘Haram’ in Sharia.” Human Rights Without Frontiers, February 10, 2023. https://hrwf.eu/afghanistan-taliban-ban-contraceptives-for-women-haram-in-sharia/.
