Women desperate to work in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan

During these hard times, it is my job that has made me happy, a 40-year-old baker Shapari said

Since its takeover a year ago, the Taliban has squeezed Afghan women out of public life, imposing suffocating restrictions on where they can work, how they can travel, and what they can wear.

There is hardly any woman in the country who has not lost a male relative in successive wars, while many of their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers have also lost their jobs or seen their income shattered as a result of a deepening economic crisis.

AFP took a series of portraits of women in major cities -- Kabul, Herat and Kandahar -- who are trying to keep households together by whatever means they can.

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"During these hard times, it is my job that has made me happy," a 40-year-old baker Shapari told AFP.

"My husband is jobless, he stays at home. I am the breadwinner for my family."

Women have been barred from most government jobs -- or had their salaries slashed and told to stay at home.

They are often first to be sacked from struggling private businesses -- particularly those unable to segregate the workplace in line with Taliban rules.

Some jobs remain open, though women face far steeper obstacles than male colleagues.

Tahmina Usmani, 23, is one of the few women journalists who has been able to continue working in this sector.

In order to circumvent a Taliban order to cover their faces while on air, she and others at Afghanistan's news broadcaster TOLOnews wear a Covid face mask.

"I was able to join TOLOnews and be the voice for women in Afghanistan, which makes me feel great," she said.

Ghuncha Gul Karimi, another woman photographed by AFP, grew her beekeeping business to produce honey for sale after her husband left the country.

"I've taken up two extra jobs and bought a motorcycle to drive myself from the honey farm and back," she said.

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"I am determined to become the queen of honey bees."

Even before the Taliban's return to power, Afghanistan was a deeply conservative, patriarchal country with progress in women's rights limited largely to major cities.

Women generally cover their hair with scarves, while the burqa -- mandatory for all women under the Taliban's first regime, from 1996 to 2001 -- continued to be widely worn, particularly outside the capital Kabul.

Earlier this year, the religious police ordered women to cover themselves completely in public, preferably including their faces.