In yet another move restricting women’s freedoms, the Taliban imposed a promised ban on hair and beauty salons across Afghanistan last week. The Taliban Ministry of Preventing Vice and Promoting Virtue justified its order by claiming that salon services violated the sharia, the Islamic laws that the Taliban is known to interpret through a fundamentalist lens.
In the nearly two years since the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August, 2021, the group has imposed numerous restrictions on women’s access to public, social and political spaces, including bans on secondary schools, universities, gymnasiums, parks, public baths, or from holding jobs across various sectors, including in non-governmental organizations. Women are also prohibited from travelling long distances, defined as anything more than 72 kilometres, without a male guardian. Now, their ability to participate in the public sector has been even more harshly curtailed.
As in the past, Afghan women didn’t give up without a fight. Many salon owners and employees bravely took to the streets of Kabul on July 19, protesting the announcement of the looming ban with the slogan “nan, kar, adalet” (which translates to “bread, work, justice” in the Dari language). But they were small in number and, lacking in allies, they were quickly dispersed by Taliban security forces who used water cannons and tasers against them, while shooting indiscriminately in the air.
In this increasingly repressive environment, beauty and hair salons provided some of the last community spaces left in the country for women to find reprieve and to socialize outside their homes. But perhaps even more importantly, these establishments were part of the few remaining sectors in Afghanistan that allowed women to engage in business and work. According to a report by the International Labour Organization released in March, women’s employment is estimated to be 25 per cent lower than in the second quarter of 2021, when the Taliban took over; by comparison, male employment is down by seven per cent. And as the ILO pointed out, the primary reason that the figures of women’s employment weren’t worse was the “home-based self-employment” practices – such as farming and clothing repair – that have become the main avenues by which Afghan women can participate in the labour market and contribute to their household income.
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