Women’s Status in Pre- and Post-Taliban Rule in Afghanistan

Somya Arora, University of South Australia

With the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, arguments around the status of women have resurfaced. Several predictions are being made regarding the future. In this context, our study aims to elucidate issues related to women's status, such as the average age at marriage, the rate of child marriage, female literacy, and female labor force participation in Afghanistan, before and after Taliban rule. Using marital history information from DHS data, we construct marriage cohorts to investigate the status of women married during the pre-Taliban (1976-1995), Taliban (1995-2001), and post-Taliban (2001-2015) periods. We applied segmented regression models based on interrupted time series data. Our results suggest that women's rights and freedoms are likely to deteriorate once again under the current Taliban regime, this time with little hope of improvement unless international intervention is both timely and effective.

Keywords: Gender Dynamics, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

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