This year’s National Entrance Examination is scheduled to be held between 5 and 8 October simultaneously in 33 provinces of the country, except the capital. According to the statistics provided by the National Examination Authority under the control of thethe education doors to girls for gaining political leverage on talk tables and now the Ministry of Higher Education in control of the Taliban group has issued an order that girls are not allowed to choose any other field of study, except teaching and midwifery in the upcoming public university entrance in the examination.
Taliban, about 145,000 students, both boys, and girls will compete in these examinations. The Taliban have imposed restrictions on girls’ choice of academic fields. Based on this restriction, girls cannot choose their fields of study according to their desire like in previous years. Although the details of this restriction have not been clarified yet, the officials of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban stated that this restriction is in the best interests of girls. Experts, women’s rights activists, and several girls who are going to participate in this year’s competition describe this decision and action of the Taliban as clear discrimination against women.
The National Examination Authority Officials of the Taliban group has announced that the process of biometrics and card distribution for Entrance Examinations has started and this year’s Entrance Examinations will be held between October 5 and 8 simultaneously in all provinces except Kabul the capital. According to the officials of this authority, the entrance exam will be held in the capital on October 21 of this year. Among the 145 thousand participants, 115 thousand of them, both boys, and girls are supposed to be recruited by government institutions of higher and semi-higher education in the country. Last year, nearly 200,000 participants from all over the country participated in the entrance exam. As officials of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban claim, the admission capacity of educational institutions has increased by 26% this year.
This year’s entrance exam will be different from previous years. In this round, female participants do not have the right to choose their fields of study according to their wishes. Ahmad Taqi, the spokesperson of the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education, said two days ago in a conversation with the “Tolo News” TV channel: “We do not introduce faculties to them that is neither useful for them [girls] nor can be used by their compatriots.” The spokesperson of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban added that specific fields of study have been considered for female participants and girls cannot choose other fields except these fields. But he did not specify which fields female participants will not be able to select. According to these statements, this decision is made in the best interests of female students.
A reliable source in the Ministry of Higher Education, who does not want his name to be mentioned in this report, told Hasht-e Subh Daily that according to the order of the directors of the Ministry, female participants won’t be accepted in specialized and professional fields of higher education this year. This source has participated in one of the meetings of the Ministry of Higher Education and has seen and heard that engineering, agriculture, economics, mining, and veterinary science are among the fields that girls will not be able to choose in this round of entrance examinations.
This source further explains that in October of this year, a delegation from the leadership of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban traveled to various universities in the country and informed the officials of these universities that female participants are not accepted in the faculties (agriculture, engineering, mining, economics, and veterinary). The source adds: “In these meetings, they clearly said that midwifery and basic education are enough for girls to become teachers and midwives.”
Abdul Qadir Khomoosh, the head of the National Examination Authority, did not respond to Hasht-e Subh Daily’s repeated calls to provide more details in this regard.
However, university professors, women’s rights activists, and several participants in this year’s entrance exam describe the Taliban’s new decision to restrict the choice of academic fields by girls as “clear discrimination” by this group against girls and women.
Zakir Hussain Ershad, a former professor at Avicenna University and a professor at Bucharest University in Romania, speaking to Hasht-e Subh Daily, says: “This type of confrontation of the Taliban with women and girls students reflects the intellectual reality and the type of view that the Taliban have towards women and towards education in general. The Taliban are not educated and do not understand that education is a vital right of women and girls. The Taliban do not consider women to have the right to autonomy. They still believe that women should search for their happiness within the framework of the home. Mr. Ershad adds that the Taliban do not see how a country develops. The growth and prosperity of Afghanistan are not an issue for them; Therefore, they not only use all the powers and capacities of the country but also create obstacles. According to him, the division of academic fields between girls and boys originates from the non-developmental view of the Taliban, and he considers it similar to quotas in the entrance examination in the government of Mohammad Ashraf Ghani.
This university professor adds: “The Taliban group does not have a true and correct view of science, which is conducive to the growth and prosperity of social groups and the country through the mediation of science and the help of specialized fields. The Taliban do not have an alternative plan to turn the miserable and intolerable conditions of Afghanistan into normal and tolerable conditions. When the Taliban do not have a humane view of all human beings apart from men and women and the people do not have a place in the government of the Taliban, it is natural that some traditional and intellectual programs and excuses will help them to implement their wishes in Afghanistan.”
On the other hand, Marzia Ahmadi, one of the women’s rights activists, speaking to the Hasht-e Subh Daily, says that the Taliban have declared “endless enmity” against women and will not stop imposing restrictions until they are completely removed from society. According to this women’s rights activist, women in Afghanistan are facing the worst human condition and are deprived of their most basic human rights.
Mrs. Ahmadi adds: “The policy of removing and imposing restrictions on women constitutes the existential philosophy and nature of this group, and they will continue until the complete removal of women and girls from all levels of social life, especially from the place where women get employment and earn money and therefore, becomes autonomous.”
Ahmadi emphasizes that the implementation and continuation of this “subordinate” policy of the Taliban will have dire consequences for the current and future Afghan society. According to him, the current “pathetic situation” and the prevailing despair of everyone can be attributed to the elimination of women. This women’s rights activist points out that the Taliban have targeted fields that play an important role in women’s economic growth, and therefore, this group is seeking to subordinate women.
At the same time, the National Examination Authority, by publishing separate tweets, has asked Entrance Examination Participants to be present in their respective provinces during the exam. Based on these tweets, the exam of each participant has been arranged in his province, and this year the Miscellaneous Exam will not be held in Kabul.
National Entrance Examination and the State of Education in the Country
The National Entrance Examination in the country is being held with restrictions on female students while the international organization “Save the Children” has identified the Afghan education system in a new assessment as being at the highest level of the risk of collapse in the world. Officials of this organization say that based on their research, Afghanistan’s educational system was ranked fourth in terms of vulnerability last year, but this year it has ranked first.
The findings of this organization show that since the country fell to the Taliban, the Afghan education system has become more fragile and the future of children, especially girls, has become more dangerous. The statistics of this organization show that Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, and Mali are the four countries that have the worst educational situation for girls in the world.
Background of the Taliban’s Restrictions on Female Students
Last year, at the same time as the resumption of university activities, the Taliban ordered that the educational classes of male and female students be separated. The Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban issued another order on April 3, 2022, based on which separate days were to be considered for male and female students in public universities. The ministry divided the six school days into two parts, according to which girls go to university for three days and boys should go on the other three days.
All this while the Taliban have imposed extensive restrictions against women in various areas of social life in a year and a half, which has led to the deprivation of the most basic rights of women. In the first days of the occupation of Kabul, this group announced that the gates of secondary schools and girls’ high schools would be blocked until further notice. Now a year and several months have passed since the exclusion of female students above the sixth grade, but this group does not agree with themselves on this issue. In the latest case, the Acting Minister of the Ministry of Promoting Virtue, Preventing Evil, Summons & Hearing Complaints has said that the education of girls is “Mubah”[an Islamic term that means permissible but has Islamic technical use], and the order of Amir ul-Momineen to close secondary schools and high schools for girls is “obligatory”. These words of the Acting Minister of the Ministry of Promoting Virtue, Preventing Evil, Summons & Hearing Complaints of the Taliban were expressed in response to the statements of Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the former political deputy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of this group. Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai had already called for the reopening of girls’ schools and described the acquisition of education as a presumption for both boys and girls. However, there is no sign of the reopening of girls’ schools in the country.
In addition to closing the education doors to girls, the Taliban have also forced female employees in government offices to stay at home and have removed them from the social sphere by imposing certain baseless restrictions. This group announced on September 19, 2021, that female employees in government offices should not come to their offices and stay at home until a “suitable environment” is enabled. This group had said that they would consider special offices for women in offices, but after more than a year, there is no progress news of this decision. In another case, a large number of female employees have been dismissed from their duties collectively.
Author: Amin Kawa – Senior Reporter and Analyst, Hasht-e Subh Daily
