The Taliban-led Afghanistan government has told female employees to send male family members to offices in their stead just a year after women were banned from government jobs and told to stay at home.
Several women stated that Taliban officials had instructed them to send a male relative to replace them, citing increased office workloads for which the Taliban necessitated the hiring of a male workforce instead of women.
Maryam, who was an employee of the Afghan Ministry of Finance for more than 15 years, said, “I was asked to introduce a male family member to replace me at the ministry so I could be dismissed from the job.”
She added, “Since they came [to power], the Taliban have demoted me and reduced my salary from 60,000 Afghanis [£575] to 12,000. I cannot even afford my son’s school fees. When I questioned this, an official rudely told me to get out of his office and said that my demotion was not negotiable”.
The Executive Director of the United Nations (UN) Women, Sima Sami Bahous, revealed that the “current restrictions on women’s employment have been estimated to result in an immediate economic loss of up to $1 billion – or up to five percent of Afghanistan’s GDP”.
