Gender & Women's Rights

Since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, Afghanistan has seen a sustained and expanding rollback of women’s and girls’ rights. Credible reporting and advocacy from the Council on Foreign Relations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others describe a system of institutionalized gender oppression that restricts education, employment, movement, dress, access to public space, and access to justice for roughly 20 million women and girls in Afghanistan. The Taliban have issued more than 80 decrees targeting women and girls, including bans on education beyond sixth grade, severe limits on paid work, and requirements that women be accompanied by a male guardian for travel and many public activities. Recent developments show continued tightening rather than relaxation of the restrictions. Reporting summarized in the provided sources notes that in 2024 the Taliban reinstated corporal punishment, including flogging and stoning, and adopted more comprehensive rules policing women’s visibility and movement. In January 2025, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Taliban leaders Hibatullah Akhundzada and Abdul Hakim Haqqani over alleged crimes against humanity tied to the persecution of Afghan women and girls. The crisis remains concentrated across Afghanistan, with especially severe impacts in urban centers and provinces where women’s access to work, schooling, and aid has been most visibly curtailed. Humanitarian consequences are broad: women and girls face loss of education and livelihoods, reduced access to healthcare and justice, heightened risk of early marriage and coercion, and exclusion from public services and aid delivery. UN-linked advocacy and major human-rights groups continue to characterize the situation as gender apartheid and call for stronger legal and diplomatic responses, but no durable policy reversal is evident in the available recent reporting.

Women and girls in Gaza continue to face a severe gendered humanitarian emergency amid the collapse of basic services, repeated displacement, and restricted aid access. UN experts warned in May 2025 that over 28,000 women and girls had been killed, thousands injured, and nearly 1 million displaced, with close to 13,000 women heading households and the whole population at critical risk of famine. They also reported that nearly 71,000 children and 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women would need urgent treatment for acute malnutrition in the immediate future. UNFPA reported in 2025 that since 2 March 2025 a total aid blockade had depleted hygiene supplies, while around 700,000 women and girls of menstruating age were struggling to manage periods without reliable water, soap, sanitation, or privacy. UNFPA said more than 10 million sanitary pads are needed each month in Gaza, but less than a quarter of that amount is available, and that nearly 90% of water and sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed or partially damaged. EU humanitarian reporting in 2025 and 2026 described Gaza as left in ruins, with more than 2 million Palestinians lacking basic shelter, sufficient water, food, or medical care, and over 18,500 patients still needing specialized treatment unavailable locally. UN Women said in October 2025 that more than 33,000 women and girls had been killed since October 2023, over one million women and girls required food aid, and a quarter million needed urgent nutrition support, including pregnant and breastfeeding women. It also reported that over 318,000 girls had already lost two school years and were at risk of losing a third. The overall pattern remains a worsening protection crisis for women and girls in Gaza, especially for pregnant and breastfeeding women, women heading households, and survivors of gender-based violence.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, abortion access in the United States has remained fragmented by state law, with KFF reporting that as of April 27, 2026, abortion is banned in 13 states and subject to gestational limits of 6 to 12 weeks in 6 more states. This means access is now determined largely by where a person lives, with patients in ban states often facing longer travel, delayed care, and reduced access to time-sensitive services. Planned Parenthood Action says one in three women now live in states where abortion is not accessible, and that 18 states had banned or severely restricted abortion in the first months after Dobbs. Recent policy and litigation concerns remain centered on medication abortion, telehealth, and federal attempts to use laws such as the Comstock Act to constrain distribution of abortion-related drugs and supplies. Guttmacher says Project 2025’s agenda could be used to bypass the FDA and potentially enforce a nationwide abortion ban via Comstock, while KFF notes that a hostile administration could use Comstock enforcement to restrict abortion pills and supplies in all states. These developments would likely intensify inequities for low-income patients, rural residents, survivors of sexual violence, and people of color, especially in states with existing provider shortages and coverage restrictions.

Iran’s compulsory hijab enforcement remains an active nationwide gender-rights crackdown. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in April 2024 that police were carrying out a violent campaign against women and girls across Iran, with widespread arrests and harassment, including many girls aged 15–17, and the use of surveillance cameras to identify noncompliant women drivers. The OHCHR also said hundreds of businesses had been forcibly closed for not enforcing compulsory hijab rules and that a draft law was nearing approval that would impose even harsher punishments, including prison terms, flogging, and fines. More recent human-rights reporting indicates the enforcement strategy has shifted rather than ended. Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2026 said authorities continued to maintain and enforce compulsory hijab rules in 2025, prosecuting women and girls, impounding vehicles, closing businesses, and using digital surveillance such as traffic cameras. It also said the Hijab and Chastity law was suspended but not repealed, and that official statements in late 2025 signaled a renewed wave of crackdown. The Center for Human Rights in Iran reported in 2025 that at least 50 establishments were sealed between late June and early October 2025 for ‘improper hijab,’ with closures, undercover agents, and surveillance increasingly replacing visible street patrols, especially outside Tehran. The impact is nationwide and affects women and girls in public life, including workers, students, drivers, and business owners. Enforcement has been reported in Tehran and other urban centers, but also in smaller cities and towns across Iran, with restrictions reaching workplaces, universities, banks, official buildings, and mixed-gender gatherings. Public resistance has forced some tactical retreat in parts of the country, but no official repeal has occurred and the legal basis for enforcement remains in force.

Saudi Arabia has made limited legal changes that expanded some women’s autonomy, including the right for women over 21 to obtain passports and travel abroad without a male guardian’s permission, and the ability to register marriages, divorces, and births. However, credible rights groups say the broader male guardianship framework remains in place and continues to shape women’s lives in key areas such as marriage, family law, custody, and access to services. Amnesty International says the system was effectively codified in Saudi Arabia’s Personal Status Law, entrenching discrimination despite earlier reforms. Recent reporting and analysis indicate that the reforms are partial rather than comprehensive: Equality Now notes that Saudi regulations introduced in 2024 strengthened some protections, including allowing courts to override an unreasonable guardian’s objection to marriage and enabling women to seek transfer of guardianship from an unjust or negligent guardian. Even so, USCIRF and other sources report that women still face guardian-linked restrictions in practice, particularly around marriage, leaving prison or shelters, and some family-law matters. The issue remains concentrated in Saudi Arabia, but it is also a major regional and global human-rights concern because it affects women’s legal status, mobility, and access to justice under Saudi law and influence.