Taliban Warns of Prohibition on Women Appearing in the Media Without Adhering to the Dress Code

According to reports, Taliban officials in Afghanistan have threatened to ban women journalists and women in general from media platforms unless they adhere to a clothing code that says they should only show their eyes. The warning was delivered on Tuesday during a meeting with journalists in Kabul, according to the Afghanistan Journalists Center, or AFJC, a press freedom organization. Mohammad Khaled Hanafi is the head of the Taliban’s Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry. The ministry’s spokesperson, Abdul Ghaffar Farooq, was described by the AFJC on its website as suggesting during the meeting that they “adhere to a modest dress code, showing images of women in black attire and veils with their faces mostly covered.

According to the organization, Farooq also recommended that TV news networks refrain from interviewing women “who do not adhere to the hijab or fully cover their faces.” According to the statement, Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada “may prohibit women from working in the media if Hanafi’s guidelines are not followed.” Officials from the ministry have not yet responded to reports of the meeting or its specifics. Regarding the state of Afghan media and “the potential repercussions of banning women from working in the media, who already face significant restrictions in their work,” the media watchdog expressed its “deep concern.

It stated that Hanafi’s warning may ultimately result in the extermination of women from the media in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have already imposed extensive limitations on the majority of women’s access to public life, employment opportunities, and education. In a statement, the AFJC noted that local media professionals in the nation had to contend with severe working conditions that mandated they adhere to a set of media norms that the Taliban had instituted after taking over control in 2021. According to the organization, some of the current instructions forbid women from working for national radio and television networks, impose “gender-based segregation” in the workplace, and forbid transmitting female voices and phone calls in some areas.