Afghan women suffer from both Taliban and Trump

A new UNICEF analysis, The Cost of Inaction on Girls’ Education and Women’s Labour Force Participation in Afghanistan, has found that female representation in the civil service fell from 21 per cent to 17.7 per cent between 2023 and 2025.

Taliban authorities banned girls from secondary education in September 2021. The report says that Afghanistan faces a dual crisis: losing trained female professionals while preventing the next generation from replacing them. By 2030, the country could lose up to 20,000 women teachers and 5,400 healthcare workers, according to the analysis. The number of female teachers in basic education fell by more than nine per cent, from nearly 73,000 in 2022 to around 66,000 in 2024. Restrictions on girls’ and women’s education and work are also costing Afghanistan $84 million each year in lost economic output, with losses expected to grow as women and girls remain blocked from classrooms and jobs. Some regions now have no doctors allowed to treat women for regular health issues.

Simultaneous effects

The effects of the Taliban’s restrictions on women and girls’ education is being felt at the same time as Donald Trump’s suspension of USAID, which has halted major health programmes and forced hundreds of facilities to close. The United States was the greatest contributor to aid in Afghanistan providing 40 per cent of all aid in 2024. Donald Trump cut all of it with almost no warning. Particularly important for expectant mothers have been the cuts to the UNFPA-run Family Health Houses, which provide reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health services in the country’s remotest areas. In 2025, the UNFPA lost approximately US$330 million in US funding worldwide, of which about a third, or US$102 million, directly affected its work in Afghanistan

The loss in health options is a death sentence to many Afghan women. Women in Afghanistan are prevented from being treated or cared for by male workers. As women disappear from the health workforce, the choice available to most women will be the black market or no treatment.

Maternity care has been particularly hit. The World Health Organisation estimated that 521 mothers died for every 100,000 live births in 2023, more than double the global average. This was estimated to have risen to 638 deaths per 100,000 births in 2024. Following the suspension of USAID there are no longer surveys to give estimates of infant or maternal mortality.

Women’s mental health has been hit by increasing lack of freedoms. The loss of rights and opportunities has triggered a mental health crisis among women and girls, who report rising levels of anxiety, hopelessness and despair. Seven in ten women now describe their mental health as “bad” or “very bad”. Nearly two-thirds say their lives have turned out worse than they had expected before the Taliban takeover.