Afghan women and girls flock online to evade Taliban curbs on female education

KABUL: Tens of thousands of Afghan women and girls have been able to join online study programmes despite the Taliban government’s ban on female education, according to internet-based course providers. The providers say they have seen strong demand from Afghanistan for courses on subjects, including English language, science and business since the Taliban extended their ban on female attendance at schools to include higher education in December 2022.

The Taliban say the restrictions are justified by their conservative interpretation of Islamic law. Unicef, the UN children’s fund, estimates the ban has affected more than one million girls. But online learning has surged as a way to get around the curbs, despite the dangers of discovery and difficulties with internet connectivity and power supplies. Access to the internet remains low and uneven across Afghanistan.

A Gallup survey in 2022 found 25 per cent of men reported having access compared with 6 per cent of women. In rural areas, just 2 per cent of women said they had internet access. UK-based online learning platform FutureLearn said it had enrolled over 33,000 Afghan students, the vast majority of them female, since it offered free access to its premium digital learning platform a year ago for the duration of the Taliban female education ban. FutureLearn, which was launched by the Open University in the UK in 2012 and has been owned by Global University Systems since December 2022, offers over 1,200 courses, with English language accounting for four of the five most popular classes among Afghan students.

University of the People, a US-accredited non-profit higher education institution, said that more than 21,000 Afghan women had applied in the past year for its degree courses, with over 3,100 currently enrolled to study subjects including business, computer science, health and education.