KABUL: Gyms and public baths are now also off-limits to Afghan women, the Taliban confirmed on Sunday, days after banning them from parks and funfairs.

Women are increasingly being squeezed out of public life since the Taliban’s return last year despite the hardline Islamists promising a softer version of the harsh rule that characterised their first stint in power that ended in 2001.

Most female government workers have lost their jobs — or are being paid a pittance to stay at home — while women are also barred from travelling without a male relative, and must cover up with a burqa or hijab when out of the home. Schools for teenage girls have also been shuttered across most of the country since the Taliban’s August 2021 return.

“Gyms are closed for women because their trainers were male and some of them were combined gyms,” Mohammad Akif Sadeq Mohajir, spokesman for the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, said.

He said “hammams” — traditional public bathing houses that have always been segregated by sex — were now also off-limits.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2022