Increased risks of drop out for women and girls : CoronaVirus Updates

The total number of children not returning to their education after the school closures is likely to be significant. The pandemic also risks jeopardizing some of the gains made since 2001 in re-building women and girls’ education following the Taliban regime. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating additional barriers due to risks—and students’ and parents’ anxiety about risks—associated with children returning to classrooms that are cramped, with no capacity for distancing, often cold, damp and poorly ventilated during the country’s severe winters, and have no or poor hygiene and clean water facilities.

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to drive many women and girls out of education permanently. School closures due to COVID-19, resulting increases in caregiving responsibilities for women and girls, and increases in poverty and unemployment will all make it harder for women and girls to study. 

These factors combine in harmful ways with pre-existing discriminatory gender norms, ongoing insecurity, and abuses such as child marriage. The likely result is that many more girls will not access education or drop out before completing their education.

Loss of income will likely affect parents’ ability to afford to pay for women and girls’ education. Families that cannot afford educational costs for all their children may prioritize continuing their sons’ education over their daughters, because of discriminatory attitudes, and practical considerations such as the expectation that sons remain living with parents and supporting them financially while daughters are expected to marry and devote their labor and assets to their husband’s family. 

Prolonged absence from school, weak study habits due to poor quality prior education in over-crowded and under-resourced schools, restrictions on girls’ freedom of movement especially as they get older,and lack of access to books, materials and internet access that could facilitate self-study are all likely to contribute to students, especially girls and women, not returning to education. 

In some of the provinces which prior to the pandemic had the lowest proportion of enrollment by girls, such as Helmand, Kandahar, Paktika, Uruzgan, and Wardak provinces, girls may be particularly at risk of not returning to school.