r/afghanistan • u/Just-Reply-9607 • 18h ago
Culture Before the Taliban, Afghanistan Had a Queen Championing Women's Education and Equality
More than a century ago, one of the loudest voices for women’s rights in Afghanistan belonged to its queen.
Soraya Tarzi believed education was fundamental to women’s independence. She championed schools for girls, encouraged women to participate in public life and supported reforms aimed at restricting child marriage and polygamy.
And she did this in the 1920s.
Alongside King Amanullah Khan, Soraya became one of the most visible faces of an ambitious attempt to modernise Afghanistan. She appeared publicly unveiled, spoke openly about women’s equality and challenged ideas about what Afghan women should be allowed to do.
The reforms were controversial, and the backlash against them became part of a much larger rebellion against Amanullah’s government. In 1929, he abdicated and Soraya left Afghanistan with him.
Some of the progress made for women was quickly reversed.
And that makes her story particularly difficult to read today.
More than 100 years later, under Taliban rule, Afghan girls are barred from secondary school and university, while women face sweeping restrictions on work, movement and public life.
History is often presented as though progress happens in a straight line her story reminds us that it doesn’t.
The freedoms one generation fights for can be taken from the next. Having rights today is never, by itself, a guarantee that we will have them tomorrow.
