Gender Index 2024: Afghanistan

Since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, UN Women has witnessed a deliberate and unprecedented assault on the rights, freedoms, and dignity of Afghan women and girls. UN Women’s 2024 Afghanistan Gender Index is the most comprehensive assessment of women’s empowerment and gender parity in the country since that turning point.

The results are stark: Afghan women are being pushed out of nearly every sphere of life. Despite their resilience and refusal to be silenced, they are falling dramatically behind global benchmarks for human development.

The index shows that nearly eight in ten young Afghan women are excluded from education, employment, and training—nearly four times the rate for men. It also finds that Afghanistan has the second-widest gender gap in the world, with a 76 per cent disparity between outcomes for women and men across health, education, financial inclusion, and decision-making.

The index adapts the twin indices launched by UN Women and UNDP in 2023—the Women’s Empowerment Index and the Global Gender Parity Index—to the complex realities of Afghanistan. It measures women’s status across five dimensions:

• life and good health;
• education, skill-building, and knowledge;
• labour and financial inclusion;
• participation in decision-making; and
• freedom from violence.

Developed with financial support from the European Union, the report warns that Afghanistan’s development will continue to spiral downward unless the entire population is empowered to thrive. It will inform the work of national and international stakeholders to address the ongoing women’s rights crisis in Afghanistan.