The Taliban ended college for women. Here's how Afghan women are defying the ban [npr.org]

^{In December, the Taliban banned female students from attending university. Some of them are turning to online options. Above: Afghan female students attend Kabul University in 2010. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images}

By Ruchi Kumar, National Public Radio, February 24, 2023

She's a young student in Afghanistan who graduated high school 3 years early at age 15. For years, she's dreamed of becoming an engineer, both to rebuild her country and to prove that women could work in what's often seen there as a male field.

M.H., who requested anonymity fearing Taliban reprisal for speaking to the press and criticizing their policy, was inches from reaching her goal this past December. But days after she completed requirements for a civil engineering degree, the Taliban banned women from universities. Her gender torpedoed her dream.

The Taliban "decided to withhold our diplomas just because we are women," M.H. told NPR. "Now I cannot even apply for any further education because I have no document to prove that I finished my engineering degree." To have any hope of leaving and establishing a career abroad, or even of working in a future Afghanistan where the Taliban are no longer in power, she's relying on the one alternative available to her — making a second attempt to earn a bachelor's degree by taking online classes in computer science from a university in the U.S.

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