Understanding Gender Apartheid
Under gender apartheid, inequality for women is not a failure of the system; it is part of how the system is designed to work.
Gender apartheid describes a system in which the repression and subordination of women is imposed through laws, state institutions and enforced social practices - often at a national level. It restricts women’s rights, freedoms, movement and participation in public life as part of the structure of governance.
The distinction
Discrimination can be serious and widespread without amounting to apartheid. The idea of gender apartheid describes something more systematic: a governing structure designed to maintain unequal status and power.
Gender discrimination
A woman may be treated differently or denied an opportunity because she is a woman.
Inequality for women can persist in employment, education, law or social life because of institutional inertia, poor information or actors resisting progress.
Discrimination may be serious or widespread without forming a single system that governs women’s rights and freedoms across society.
Gender apartheid
Restrictions are built into laws, institutions and social practices, and operate together across different areas of women’s lives.
Government, courts, police and other authorities create, maintain or enforce the system.
The system applies because a person is a woman. Wealth, status, profession, location or personal connections may affect how restrictions are experienced, but they do not exempt her from the system.
Gender apartheid seeks to create
The system regulates how women may dress, move, study, work, speak, form relationships and participate in society.
Women may be separated from men, excluded from public spaces or prevented from participating equally in education, work, politics and public life.
The combined effect is to keep women in a position with fewer rights, freedoms and opportunities than men.
In everyday life
Gender apartheid operates across many areas of life at once. Laws, institutions and enforced social practices regulate women’s movement, education, work, family life, dress, speech and participation in public life.
Restrictions on travelling, leaving home, entering particular places or moving without permission or accompaniment.
Limits or bans on access to schools, universities, subjects of study or forms of professional training.
Exclusion from professions, workplaces or economic independence, or rules determining where and how women may work.
Restrictions on participation in public, cultural, sporting, political or social life.
State control over dress, appearance and bodily autonomy, backed by surveillance or punishment.
Unequal rights in marriage, divorce, custody, inheritance, legal testimony or other areas of family and civil law.
Restrictions on expression, protest, political participation, journalism, organising or public dissent.
The term
The term Gender Apartheid became particularly prominent in descriptions of the treatment of women during the Taliban's first period of rule in Afghanistan.
1996–2001
Afghan women and women’s-rights advocates used the language of gender apartheid to describe the systematic restrictions imposed on women.
1999
A UN Special Rapporteur described the Taliban as having introduced a system of apartheid in respect of women.
2021 onwards
The Taliban’s return to power and the rapid removal of rights from women and girls brought renewed international use of the term.
Today
Women’s-rights advocates, legal experts and some governments are pressing for gender apartheid to be explicitly recognised in international criminal law.
International law
Not yet.
International criminal law already recognises persecution on gender grounds as a crime against humanity. It also recognises the crime of apartheid, but the Rome Statute's definition of apartheid is framed in terms of domination by one racial group over another.
Gender apartheid is therefore not currently a separate offence named in the Rome Statute.
A growing international campaign argues that this leaves a gap: gender persecution can criminalise serious acts committed against women, while the concept of gender apartheid is intended to describe an institutionalised system created to maintain their subordinate status.
Recognition could create clearer obligations for states to prevent and punish gender apartheid, investigate those responsible and avoid supporting its continuation.
It would also give women who have lived under these systems a stronger form of legal and public acknowledgement: that what happened to them was not simply unfair treatment or a series of separate restrictions, but part of a system recognised as criminal under international law.
Debate and criticism
There are important debates about the word apartheid, the need for a new international crime, and the terminology itself.
The word is inseparable from the history of racial apartheid, particularly in South Africa. Critics argue that extending it to other forms of domination may weaken that historical specificity. Supporters respond that they are not claiming the histories are identical: they are applying the concept of an institutionalised regime designed to maintain the domination of one group over another.
Gender persecution is already recognised under international criminal law. Critics therefore question whether a separate crime is necessary. Advocates argue that persecution addresses prohibited acts, while apartheid better describes an entire institutional structure intended to preserve the subordinate status of a group.
Both expressions are used. Some feminists and women’s-rights advocates prefer sex apartheid because women and girls are principally targeted on the basis of sex. This project uses gender apartheid because these systems also create and enforce gendered legal and social categories, roles and expectations.
If every discriminatory law or example of sexism is called gender apartheid, the term loses its meaning. Our use requires something more: systematic and institutionalised repression in which the subordination of women forms a fundamental part of governance.
Sources & further reading
Frequently asked questions
No. Discrimination can be severe without amounting to apartheid. Gender apartheid describes a systematic and institutionalised structure in which the repression and subordination of women is maintained across multiple areas of life and forms part of how a society is governed.
No. Separation by gender is not by itself enough. The central issue is a wider system of domination: unequal rights and freedoms, institutional enforcement and the maintenance of one group in a subordinate position.
Not as a distinct offence named gender apartheid. International criminal law recognises gender persecution and also recognises apartheid as a crime against humanity, but the existing Rome Statute definition of apartheid is framed in racial terms. There is an active campaign to change this.
The term draws attention to the structure connecting individual restrictions. It describes a system intended to maintain domination and unequal status, rather than treating each discriminatory rule as an isolated problem. Advocates also seek recognition of that system with the legal seriousness attached to apartheid as a crime against humanity.
Both terms are used. Sex is central to why women and girls are targeted, while the systems involved also impose and enforce gendered roles, identities and expectations. This project uses gender apartheid because it is the terminology most prominent in the current international legal and human-rights campaign.
No. The threshold should be much higher than the existence of discriminatory laws or unequal outcomes. The concept describes systematic, institutionalised repression in which maintaining the subordinate position of women is a fundamental feature of governance.
Afghanistan under the Taliban is at the centre of the present international campaign. The term has also been used in relation to Iran. Because gender apartheid is not yet a distinct legal offence, these descriptions remain part of an evolving political and legal debate rather than a formal criminal designation automatically applied to a country.
Women and girls are the principal group whose subordination the concept describes. Systems enforcing rigid gender rules can also harm transgender people and others who do not conform to the roles imposed by the state.
There is not yet a single international legal test for a distinct crime called gender apartheid. Advocates, scholars, UN experts and governments are currently debating how the concept should be defined and whether it should be codified in international criminal law.