Prolonged crises always pose a threat to education but the current situation in Afghanistan is perhaps the most extreme case in decades. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world where secondary and higher education are formally forbidden to girls and women, with around 2.2 million girls barred from learning beyond primary school, states UNESCO. The Taliban’s restrictions on girls’ secondary schooling and the December 2022 ban on women’s access to universities have pushed Afghan women out of the education pipeline that sustains science, medicine, engineering, and public health.
The damage does not stop at classroom doors. A ban on education is also a ban on belonging to the future. It erodes scientific identity, which is the sense that one has the right to learn, question, and contribute. It dismantles procedural knowledge: how to apply, qualify, publish, and collaborate within global systems of science. Over time, mentorship networks collapse, research trajectories are cut short, and laboratories are emptied of talent. This damage is occurring while Afghanistan faces overlapping health, economic, and humanitarian crises that demand scientific capacity rather than its destruction.
International responses have focused largely on humanitarian relief and individual opportunities such as scholarships. These efforts matter but are not enough. Scholarships help individuals leave Afghanistan but do not preserve a knowledge system when an entire generation is excluded at scale. The World Bank has warned that bans on women’s education and employment will produce long-term economic losses, including reduced lifetime earnings and national income growth. UNESCO has similarly highlighted the educational, economic, and psychosocial costs of suspending women’s access to higher education and work.
Still, knowledge does not simply disappear when institutions collapse. Recently, UNICEF marked more than 1,000 days since the secondary school ban began, representing billions of learning hours lost. Alongside this staggering loss exists another reality: women refusing to let scientific thinking die, even when formal pathways are blocked. Across Afghanistan and within the diaspora, women in life sciences and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) are sustaining learning under repression through quiet acts of continuity: sharing notes and problem sets, organizing peer study circles, mentoring younger students, and maintaining study routines under severe constraints.
Afghan scientists and engineers in the diaspora are supporting alternative ways for learning as temporary schooling bridges until education can be restored. These efforts often focus on helping students understand international education systems, sustain foundational scientific knowledge through online learning, and preserve the confidence required to continue identifying as scientists in environments that deny their legitimacy.
Such learning takes place under constant constraint in Afghanistan. Internet access is limited, personal safety is a concern, and credentials are often out of reach. What matters, then, is not accumulation of certificates, but continuity: staying mentally engaged with science, remaining prepared for future opportunities, and maintaining peer connections that counter isolation.
Afghan women’s exclusion from STEM is often described as “lost potential.” That phrase understates what is happening. This is not passive loss; it is the deliberate dismantling of a national knowledge base. When women are barred from science, society loses its capacity to diagnose disease, train health professionals, innovate, and respond to crises. Education bans do not only restrict women’s lives, they weaken a country’s ability to recover.
Afghan women in STEM are not waiting to be rescued. Many are already sustaining knowledge through discipline, persistence, and mutual support. The question is whether the international community will recognize these efforts as more than survival strategies, and invest in keeping scientific identity and learning alive so that, when political conditions change, there is still a generation ready to rebuild Afghanistan.
Dr. Amna Mehmood is a senior scientist and science educator whose work focuses on sustaining STEM education and scientific identity among Afghan women under conditions of educational exclusion. Dr. Amna Mehmood is a molecular biologist and senior scientist at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.
