University of Alberta expert assists women in Afghanistan keep learning and working in STEM

After fleeing Afghanistan in 2021 when the Taliban put severe restrictions on the work and education women were allowed to pursue, Zahra Nazari is now an ambassador for a global movement to help women trapped in her home country continue their education in STEM fields and find remote work online.

A postdoctoral researcher working under Petr Musilek of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Nazari spends half her time in his Energy Digitization Lab, working on applying machine learning techniques to the energy sector, particularly for charging electric vehicles.

The rest of her day is spent fighting for the digital rights of women in a country that ranks among the lowest in the world on the Gender Equality Index, at 157th of 162 countries.

After launching the Afghanistan chapter of an organization called Women in Tech, a global movement to help women gain access to the benefits of technology, Nazari has so far recruited 150 members from within Afghanistan — hosting webinars on how to use social media for success, why women should go into STEM fields and how to freelance remotely.

“In university I knew many girls who were excited to learn about AI,” says Nazari. “They know how to code, but since the Taliban took over, they don’t have any options.”

Nazari says more than 90 per cent of women are digitally illiterate and have no access to the internet, even those who are students. To help with internet access, she is now reaching out to other organizations, such as Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan and Classrooms Without Walls, to find solutions.

To help Afghan women protect themselves, Nazari will host a webinar on cybersecurity later this month, demonstrating how to use proxy social media accounts to avoid detection by the Taliban.

“Many don’t like to use the internet because of security problems,” she says.