By Matin Mehrab and Sana Atef
Mahsa took the entrance exam at Balkh University on Thursday. She sat there, enthusiastically believing she was only one good grade away from entering the field of journalism. After the invigilator handed her the exam booklet, Mehsa turned the page to quickly find her major. It wasn’t there.
“I wanted to choose journalism, but it was not an available field. My second and third choices were economics and political science, but neither were among the options on my exam sheets,” she says in an interview with Zan Times.
After a year of planning and studying to enter the field of journalism, Mehsa had minutes to decide what she would do for the next four years. “I inevitably chose the fields of education, literature, and religious studies,” she says.
Mahsa isn’t alone. The latest group of high school graduates in 33 provinces had to take entrance exams containing fields determined by the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education. They had removed journalism, economics, agriculture, veterinary medicine, and engineering from the list of elective fields for girls in their first entrance exam.
Mobina, one of the participants from Badghis Province, says that she had to drop out of school because of the Taliban decision to restrict the fields that women could enter. “I had planned to work in the Afghan media for a long time, so I studied a lot to gain academic knowledge in this field. But as soon as I left the exam hall, I decided not to continue my studies,” she tells Zan Times.
At least 13 programs were removed from the girls’ selection form at Kandahar University, according to a source who spoke to Zan Times under the condition of anonymity. The source explains that “13 fields have been eliminated, including law and political science, computer science, journalism, public administration, engineering, economics, mining exploration, and agriculture, leaving girls with only medicine, education, and sharia.”
Additionally, 123 girls who took the entrance exam in Kandahar were banned from choosing universities outside of Kandahar by the Taliban. Its National Administration of Examinations announced that 145,000 people took this year’s entrance examination in 33 provinces across the country. That’s down significantly from last year’s number of 200,000 participants.
Humira Ghoryani, a former journalism professor at Herat University, believes that removing journalism from the girls’ selection list reflects the Taliban’s fear of the media. According to her, most protests against the Taliban in the past year were carried out by women. And they’ve publicized their marches and demonstrations to the world via social media and messaging services. With more media knowledge, they could even more effectively explain their situation and the detrimental effect of the Taliban on life in Afghanistan.
The last-minute changes to university education for women mirror what is happening in schools. Since the Taliban regained power, they repeatedly changed their explanation as to why teenage girls are banned from schools. First, the Taliban insisted the ban on girls going to school beyond grade 6 was just temporary. Then the Taliban minister of education issued a new reason for banning girls from education beyond grade 6 when he stated that such a prohibition is because it is in accordance with the Afghan people’s culture, which is supposedly against sending their daughters to school. Recently, the Taliban sent a letter to girls’ schools in Kandahar and asked them to expel all girls older than 13. This is yet another indicator of how the Taliban leadership is hostile to girls’ education.
All names have been changed to protect the identity of interviewees.
