Since the overthrow of Taliban rule in 2001, women’s education in Afghanistan has made large, encouraging, and necessary strides. However, with several problems still to be addressed and many changes ahead in 2014, critical momentum must be maintained to ensure that recent gains for girls and women are not reversed.
Before the fall of the Taliban government, almost no girls attended school in Afghanistan. Today 40% of the country’s students are female. The educational situation is improving as a whole: the total number of students has risen from one million to 8.3 million, and the first national curriculum in 30 years has been established.
Despite these encouraging advances, education is still an unattainable dream for too many Afghani girls. According to Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, there are still “many millions of girls who are not in school across the country.” Many millions, he notes, “who are not able to say… I want to be a doctor.”
Additionally, many school districts have problems finding qualified female teachers. And as girls enter high school, they are often at risk of dropping out due to social, cultural, and family pressure.
Beth Murphy, reporting to the Global Post about a visit to a girls’ school in Kabul province, notes that going to school is still risky for many students. In the past few months, six attacks against schoolgirls have taken place, including a bomb explosion, mass poisonings, and a school that was set on fire.
“There is a difficult question being asked here,” she says. “Can the hard-won gains be sustained at a time when Taliban power is growing?”
Experts also fear for the stability of the region as 2014 brings several major changes. With a large-scale international military withdrawal and a presidential election scheduled for early 2014, some worry that the political climate could shift and that some of Afghanistan’s progress will be lost.
Shaima Alkozai, deputy principal at a girls’ school in Kabul wonders, “What will be the future for women? Will their situation improve or become worse? It doesn’t matter to us if we have to wear a burka or not. But we want to continue with education.”
Creative Commons Love: Canada in Afghanistan on Flickr.com
Written by Carla Drumhiller Smith