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In the last days of September, without warning, the internet across Afghanistan cut out. The blackout, which lasted two days, put an abrupt stop to communication between families, caused chaos for businesses and grounded flights. But for many women in Afghanistan, for whom the internet was a lifeline to the outside world, the shock ran deeper.

Khadija Haidary, a journalist at the women-led, investigative newsroom Zan Times and supporter of a network of online and secret schools operating in Afghanistan, told me: “I myself, living in Pakistan, am away from my family and was in daily contact via WhatsApp, so when the internet was cut off, I had a terrifying suffocating feeling.”

Haidary’s sister had been glued to the TV back in Afghanistan, watching the call-ins and voice messages that people had sent to the TV stations to be broadcast, hoping Haidary might have recorded a message for them. “Those two days were truly horrific,” Haidary said.

After the internet was restored, Haidary managed to speak to some of the girls and women in her network. She told me: “All the girls I spoke to said they felt intensely hopeless. Rubina*, 18, said she felt like the day Kabul fell had been repeated. Roweida*, 17, said she thought to herself, ‘Everything was closed, they should have at least not taken away our only hope’.”

The young women who were studying in online universities were even more distraught. “Hadiya*, 32, said she felt like the roof over her head had been taken away; she felt helpless. A woman from Herat said that life without the internet is impossible.”

Since the Taliban swept back into power in 2021, women’s rights in Afghanistan have been systematically destroyed. Women are banned from most employment, cannot access public parks or baths, and must cover their faces completely. W​​hen in public, they are forbidden from speaking and must be accompanied by a male guardian. Girls over 12 are banned from attending school. In December last year, one of the final routes to education previously permitted by the Taliban – midwifery and nursing courses – was removed.

Last year researchers interviewed 426 Afghan women prohibited from attending secondary schools, high schools, and universities by the Taliban. 87.6% exhibited symptoms of depression and 49.8% reported suicidal thoughts.

In this context, online learning has become a critical lifeline and route of resistance. “It wasn’t just about classes,” one woman told Haidary.  “It kept our spirits alive. Every night we met on Google Meet, and hearing each other’s voices gave us hope.”

Covert online studying

I spoke to Saeed Keshavarzi, a social psychologist and sociologist at Osnabrück University in Germany, who recently published a paper based on interviews with 35 young Afghan women aged 19-32. Some women sent recorded responses to the researchers in the middle of the night, when their families were sleeping.

Keshavarzi and his colleagues wanted to understand how educated Afghan women – who had experienced two decades of progress – were coping with having their opportunities abruptly eliminated.

The women described the crushing weight of this. As one explained: “In Afghanistan, it is widely repeated that women are nothing … My relatives believe that women must only take care of the children of the husband, cook and prepare bread, the same for his brothers, they say that women are only for the home, not work and outside, no education needed.”

Keshavarzi found that in the context of dehumanization and violence that stripped away women’s sense of safety, covert resistance through clandestine online education had become a key survival strategy for many women.

One told him and his colleagues: “Some social activists and educated Afghans who have left the country – some now in Iran, Pakistan, Europe, or the US – have come together to establish online schools. Others have launched online universities in various disciplines.

“For example, there is now a Zan (meaning woman) online university managed from abroad, which offers courses in medicine, nursing, midwifery, economics, management, and many other fields. Girls are enrolling in these online universities and continuing their education […] Most of the instructors are bachelor’s or master’s graduates who studied abroad on scholarships. They teach voluntarily, without receiving any salary.”

It’s difficult to gauge the scale of such initiatives, but they are not niche. One provider, the “Online Women’s University” says it has 17,000 Afghan students. Another, Children on the Edge, supports covert online schools that provide education to over 800 women and girls. A major limiting factor, even before the blackout, was access to the internet: in 2022, only 6% of women had internet access (compared with 25% of men).

Underground schools

Even if women can find a good enough internet connection, Keshavarzi voiced concern about the missing generation of girls unable to access any education at all. Generally, Afghan women at university level have more opportunities for secret education than younger girls. Online opportunities for those at high school level are much fewer.

Haidary told me: “The problem is internet access, as people in non-urban areas do not have access to stable and affordable internet. Students under 18 years old in cities like Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, and some other cities could study online, but this is not possible in small towns, provinces, and districts … most families do not allow young girls to have smart phones too.”

Because of this, the only option many girls have if they want to continue their studies is to turn to the much more limited underground home-based schools. Haidary used to work as a manager of Daricha Schools, an organisation founded by Hazrat Wahriz, an Afghan living in Canada.

These community schools, often with 20 or more students each, tend to operate from the homes of their teachers, who receive no salary. The students are mostly girls who know the teacher somehow – family members, former students, neighbours. “These home or underground schools gather their students with great caution and from familiar addresses,” Haidary said. They teach English, science, and social sciences, with support from organisations such as Daricha.

Haidary told me: “The students wear black hijabs and carry the Quran with them so they are not tracked. The teacher gathers the Quran and religious books in her home to show the Taliban that it is a madrasa (religious school) when they enter. Some schools even use sewing machines to show the Taliban that the place is a tailoring course. There are a lot of challenges, yet the girls are determined to learn and continue despite a thousand difficulties.”

‘They remain resistant’

Whether by enrolling in secret schools or logging into covert university classes, these Afghan women voice the same message: they refuse to give up.

Nazanin*, one of the women interviewed by Keshavarzi and his colleagues, captured this defiance two years ago: « Maybe it will be very difficult, maybe we will go through a difficult time, but I think that we will definitely succeed, we are not like the women of twenty years ago, we do now allow all things to get lost, we are educated people now. »

This is a sentiment that Haidary sees repeatedly in her work with Afghanistan’s resistance networks. “They remain resistant,” she tells me. “They seek hope in extremely difficult situations, and now that they are familiar with the world through the internet, they try harder to keep pace with women globally, which is why they do not shy away from education through any possible means.”

Their resistance, however, exists alongside a growing isolation and feeling that they have been forgotten by the rest of the world. Keshavarzi told me: « Women that we interviewed said: ‘We are forgotten. No one cares about us.' » Haidary agrees: “The women and girls of Afghanistan need solidarity, so that all women around the world know that a very basic and fundamental right, like education in schools, has been taken away from them … Yet, they have not given up trying.”

Research Round-up

Here’s what else is making the news:

1. 💰 Women need to work 15½ months to earn what men make in a year according to new data from EIGE’s Gender Equality Index 2025.
2. 🥚 Although an increasing number of women are freezing their eggs, very few return to use them, according to a US study.
3. 👟 Most current running footwear is designed for and tested on men. Researchers urge footwear brands to stop this “shrink it and pink it” approach.

About The Evidence

The Evidence is a Gloria Media newsletter designed to help you understand gender inequality – and show how we might fix it.

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