Afghanistan: Broadcaster marks International Women's Day with all-female panel segment

An Afghan broadcaster aired a rare all-female panel in a program segment to mark International Women’s Day. The airing of the discussion comes in the midst of increasingly restrictive policies by the Taliban administration in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s Tolo News on Wednesday marked International Women’s Day by airing an all-female panel with an audience of women in light of the occasion. The panel was a rare broadcast since the insurgent group retook control of Afghanistan on the heels of the West’s military withdrawal in August 2021. With their faces almost completely covered, the panel, made up of three women and one female moderator, discussed women’s place in Islam.

“A woman has rights from an Islamic point of view…it is her right to be able to work, to be educated,” said journalist Asma Khogyani.

“Whether you want it or not, women exist in this society…if it’s not possible to get an education at school, she will learn knowledge at home,” said former university professor Zakira Nabil, noting that women would continue to find ways to learn and work.

75 percent of female journalists lost their jobs since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, according to a 2022 survey by Reporters Without Borders. The International Labor Organization said that in 2022 and since mid-2021, female employment in Afghanistan fell by 25 percent because of the growing restrictions the insurgent group has placed on women and because of Afghanistan’s economic crisis.

The United Nations Mission to Afghanistan has since called on the Taliban to reverse its restrictions on women and girls, describing such policies as “distressing.” The insurgent group last year ordered a ban on most girls from attending high school and universities, as well as barring women from participating in aid work.

Universities in Afghanistan have reopened following the winter break, but the barring of women from attending was still in effect. The ban on female university students was due to the Taliban’s accusation that girls were flouting the strict dress code and that they were going to school without being accompanied by a male relative to and from the campus.