It has been over three and a half years since Afghan women from all walks of life first took to the streets chanting “Bread, Work, Freedom,” a fierce assertion of their right to work and to be free from the Taliban’s systemic oppression. This International Workers’ Day, their call is more urgent than ever.
Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, they have imposed draconian restrictions on Afghan women, including barring them from most professions and severely curtailing paid employment, including in the aid sector. Taliban policies have effectively shuttered most women-run businesses outside the home, including beauty salons, which formerly employed an estimated 60,000 women.
Even when not banning women from entering specific professions, the Taliban have imposed measures that inhibit their access to paid occupations. This includes mandating that women be accompanied by a mahram (male guardian), sometimes preventing unmarried women from working, and banning women’s voices from being heard outside their houses. Officials from the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, who are empowered to enforce these measures, often harass women who leave their homes to work and sometimes detain them.
Coupled with Afghanistan’s severe economic crisis, it is nearly impossible for women to access formal employment. As a member of the International Labour Organization since 1934, Afghanistan is obligated under international law to prevent all discrimination against women at work.
Before the Taliban takeover, female labor participation was already low at 19 percent. Now, it is estimated to be a mere 5 percent. This has driven even more families into extreme poverty, in a country where only 16 percent of Afghans say they can satisfy their daily material needs easily, while a further 22 percent more or less manage to meet their basic needs.
Despite all this, Afghan women have shown extraordinary resilience and ingenuity as they find new ways to make ends meet and demand agency. Whether running microenterprises from their homes, managing online businesses, or leading a campaign to make gender apartheid a crime under international law, Afghan women are at the front line of resistance against the Taliban’s oppression.
As Afghan women continue to defy their erasure from public life, the world needs to stand by them in their fight to assert their rights: for bread, work, and freedom.