Afghan Women Turn to Small Business, But the Taliban Is Making It Harder
Afghan Women Turn to Small Business, But the Taliban Is Making It Harder
Afghan women are shut out of most jobs under Taliban rule. The group has banned women from working in government offices, NGOs — organizations that help with aid and development — and most stores. Girls cannot go to school past sixth grade. Beauty salons were ordered closed in 2023. With regular work unavailable, some women have tried to earn money another way: running small businesses from home.
These businesses include embroidery, making textiles, preparing food, and small-scale selling. According to Reuters reporting in April 2024, these home-based ventures have kept some women afloat financially. But they face a major problem: getting money to start or grow a business. Banks are reluctant to lend to women without a male relative to guarantee the loan. The systems that provide small loans to entrepreneurs have largely collapsed since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
Now the internet is making things worse. By September 2025, Reuters documented that Taliban restrictions on internet access were cutting off women who make embroidered goods and textiles from online marketplaces where they sold to customers worldwide. For artisans who had built small export businesses through social media, these restrictions essentially closed their shops. An embroidered textile that once earned real money through online sales now brings in far less when sold only locally.
Rules Keep Shifting Depending Where You Are
The Taliban's tolerance for women entrepreneurs is not the same everywhere. According to Crisis Group's analysis from March 2026, in some cities like Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif, women quietly run home businesses with little interference from officials. In more conservative rural areas, the same work invites intervention. This means national statistics about women-owned businesses in Afghanistan are misleading — what is possible in one province may be impossible in another.
The UN Development Programme noted in April 2026 that the Taliban formally forbids women from working in government or aid organizations. This pushes any work that women do into unofficial channels. Businesses operating outside the legal system cannot sign contracts, get bank financing, or use courts to solve disputes. This keeps them small and fragile.
What the Taliban says and what it does do not match. In August 2022, a Taliban official claimed Islam allows women to get education, work, and run businesses. Since then, the group has banned girls from advanced schooling and closed offices that employed women. Four years later, that gap between words and actions has only widened.
For women trying to make a living and for international organizations trying to help, the situation is trapped between three problems. The official path is blocked by Taliban rules. The unofficial path depends on which local Taliban commander is watching — and whether he is paying attention. And the internet is increasingly cut off. Afghan women entrepreneurs have found ways to survive, but they have done so despite the system working against them, not because the system lets them work.
The path forward is unclear. Real change would require either the Taliban to shift its policies — something there is no sign of happening — or outside pressure strong enough to make the Taliban reconsider keeping women out of the economy. Neither seems likely in the near term.
