Human Rights Watch has marked May 1, Labor Day, with a call to support Afghan women’s continued resistance to the Taliban’s systematic exclusion of women from the workforce and public life—an exclusion the group describe as among the most repressive in the world.
In a statement released Wednesday, the organization said Taliban have severely curtailed women’s paid employment since returning to power in August 2021, barring them from most professions, shuttering women-owned businesses, and imposing sweeping restrictions that leave formal work “nearly impossible” for most women.
“More than three and a half years since Afghan women first took to the streets chanting ‘Bread, Work, Freedom,’ their call is more urgent than ever,” the statement said. “They asserted their right to work and to live free from the Taliban’s systemic oppression. That call still echoes across Afghanistan.”
Human Rights Watch noted that the Taliban have not only banned women from working in many sectors—including the once-flourishing beauty salon industry, which employed an estimated 60,000 women—but also imposed restrictive measures on those still allowed to work. These include requiring a mahram, or male guardian, for travel, discouraging employment of unmarried women, and even prohibiting women’s voices from being heard in public spaces.
The group highlighted that officials from the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice have harassed and, at times, detained women simply for leaving home to work.
Female labor force participation in Afghanistan has dropped from an already-low 19 percent before the Taliban’s takeover to just 5 percent today, according to the organization. That sharp decline, coupled with the country’s economic crisis, has driven many households into deeper poverty.
Yet Human Rights Watch praised the resilience and ingenuity of Afghan women who continue to resist. Many, it said, have created home-based microenterprises, launched online businesses, and led campaigns to classify gender apartheid as a crime under international law.
“As Afghan women continue to defy their erasure from public life,” the statement concluded, “the world must stand by them in their fight for bread, work, and freedom.”
