The Women Running Businesses Under Taliban Rules

With secondary education and most jobs out of reach, thousands of Afghan women have turned to entrepreneurship as the only path to make money and maintain a social life.

The Taliban have imposed some of the world’s toughest restrictions on women and girls, but to ward off economic collapse and isolation, they have let women start businesses in Afghanistan, as long as they comply with a cascade of debilitating rules.

More than 10,000 Afghan women have business licenses — a tenfold increase in the past five years, according to the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry. With another estimated 120,000 working without licenses, small businesses are the largest employers of Afghan women, according to the World Bank.

But that apparent boom does little to hide the shrinking horizons for women’s lives.

Those who dreamed of becoming lawyers, engineers or university professors have turned to carpet weaving, cosmetics or vocational training because they cannot work in government administration or for many nonprofits.

They also cannot run beauty salons, study midwifery or nursing, or speak with male clients, suppliers or banking officials.

A vast majority of Afghan women do not work outside the home at all — less than 7 percent of Afghan women were employed as of 2024, according to the U.N. Development Program.

Those who do work have faced growing hurdles. The harassment and arrests of dozens of women by the morality police in June led to a rare public protest.

Still, as the Taliban approach the five-year anniversary of their return to power, Afghan women have turned to entrepreneurship as one of the last ways they can support their households and find a semblance of social life.

“The only remaining hope for women in Afghanistan is business,” said Behnaz Saljughi, a representative for female business owners in the province of Herat.

On a recent morning in a warehouse in Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, some 60 women knotted, trimmed and wove rugs under the watch of their boss, Nasira Azizi, 19.

Ms. Azizi was 14 when the Taliban swept back to power in 2021 and later barred millions of girls like her from studying beyond sixth grade. “I fell into depression,” Ms. Azizi said about the ban on education. “At home, you see the same faces all the time.”

The rug workshop opened up her world. “Here, there are at least more topics to discuss, more motivation to get the job done,” she said.

- Author: Elian Peltier, The New York Times

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