Zarlashta still dreams of graduating from school and going on to university, but she was forced to end her studies in the 11th grade. Once at school, Zarlashta would sit in her classes dreading the journey home and trying to figure out alternative routes. Zarlashta, now 18, misses her classmates, teachers and the whole educational environment, but knows returning to school is out of the question. Schoolgirls in the conservative southern province of Kandahar say that verbal abuse on the way to school each day has become routine.
Many are being forced to give up studying at an early age. In Kandahar, the education department said that 30 per cent of the children currently enrolled in schools were girls. However, although some 13, girls enroll at schools in Kandahar each year only a tiny proportion actually graduate.
The drop-out rate is exacerbated by conservative traditions including early marriage as well as wider issues of honour. Figures for the last educational year showed that 2, boys finished school compared to only girls. Many young women were either too intimidated to continue their education or were forced to withdraw from school by their families.
Former teacher Mohammad Dawood Bashari agreed that said that such harassment had a serious impact on the wider society too. He called for security officials to institute a policy of zero tolerance and arrest anyone who pestered girls on their way to school.
Nonetheless, street harassment has become such an everyday occurrence that many young women feel they have no choice but to keep quiet and endure it if they want to get an education. Spozhmay is in the 12th grade at Aino High School and also helps teach 3rd grade at a private school. Spozhmay added that her mother knew, but that she could not tell her father because then he would forbid her to go school and 12 years of hard studying would have been wasted.
