The Taliban’s New Tactic: Silencing Questions on Women's Rights

Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, Afghanistan has seen a relentless assault on press freedom. In the latest development, the Taliban have now banned journalists from asking about the status of women’s rights.

The Taliban have systematically dismantled the rights of Afghan women, imposing harsh restrictions on their education, employment, and participation in public life. Women have been barred from secondary and higher education, excluded from most jobs, and restricted from traveling without a male guardian. Public spaces are increasingly off-limits to women, who are also required to cover their faces in public.

The new ban on questions regarding the status of women represents a further escalation in this erasure. By forbidding journalists from even asking about the state of women’s rights, the Taliban are not just suppressing information—they are attempting to eliminate women from the public narrative altogether.

“As a journalist who has faced the limitations, fear, and censorship of this regime, I find this situation deeply distressing,” Tahmina Usmani, the first female broadcast journalist to appear on-screen after the Taliban’s takeover, told More to Her Story. “The new law prohibiting journalists from asking questions about women’s rights and education highlights the Taliban’s evasion of accountability to the people and the fate of women in Afghanistan.”

Ms. Usmani believes that one way to resist the Taliban’s oppression is to keep reporting from outside the country. “By providing continuous reports, we can convince the world that none of these laws are normal and they should never become accepted as normal. Instead, these reports should explain the dire situation of women, who are being intensely oppressed and erased.”

Sahar Fetrat, a Women’s Rights Researcher at Human Rights Watch, told More to Her Story that this new rule is aimed at completely suffocating and silencing the voices of Afghan women.

“Dictating what journalists can and cannot ask about is a tool for suppressing not only freedom of expression and attacking journalists’ duties but also for eradicating “women’s rights” entirely from public discourses,” she said.

Since the arrival of the Taliban in 2021, Afghanistan’s once-thriving media landscape has been decimated, with dozens of media outlets forced to close and hundreds of journalists losing their jobs and fleeing the country. Women journalists, in particular, have borne the brunt of this repression.

Just this week, a Taliban-controlled state broadcaster silenced a female journalist and obscured her image during a live media event to comply with the regime’s newly enacted “morality” laws, which ban women from speaking or showing their faces in public.

In 2022, the Afghan National Journalists’ Union (ANJU) conducted a survey that highlighted the reality faced by women journalists under the Taliban:

• 87% of women journalists reported experiencing gender discrimination during the Taliban regime.

• 60% of women journalists lost their jobs and careers as a result of the Taliban's policies.

• 79% of women journalists said they had been insulted and threatened under the Taliban regime, including physical threats, abuse by Taliban officials, and written and verbal threats.

• 91% of working women journalists were the sole economic support for their families.

• 87% of women journalists reported that they were not motivated to work in the current situation due to fear.

Media outlets that once provided critical coverage of human rights issues in Afghanistan, including women’s rights, have been shut down or forced to comply with Taliban directives. The few journalists who remain in the country operate under constant threat of violence and imprisonment, leading many to self-censor or abandon their work altogether. But some say this new measure is a tipping point. 

“We have reached a critical tipping point. The Taliban has now banned any interviews or questions from journalists on women and girls’ education. They are making it clear — women and girls will not return. We warned this day would come. The world didn’t listen. Every single country. Every single news channel. Every diplomatic envoy. Every NGO working in Afghanistan. United. Speak out. Hold your governments accountable,” wrote Afghan-Canadian tech entrepreneur Sara Wahedi on X.

The international community has condemned the Taliban’s assault on press freedom, but concrete actions to support Afghan journalists, particularly women, have been limited. Human rights organizations have called for stronger measures to protect journalists and hold the Taliban accountable, but the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate. The Taliban may try to silence questions, but the world must demand answers.