Perseverance amid challenges: Afghan women’s engagement in society

Written By: Zahra Rashidi

Throughout history, women in Afghanistan have persevered through numerous challenges, big and small, in their quest to assert their engagement within society.

These challenges have sometimes been severe and rarely light. However, the undeniable issue is that women have always strived to break out of the thick layers of discrimination to the surface of society. In this report, you will read the story of a 62-year-old woman who heads her family and is forced to return home at three in the morning from where she works overnight.

She believes that working, even under challenging conditions, is better than being confined within the four walls of a house.

Bakhtawar is a 62-year-old woman who works as a servant in one of the wedding halls in Kabul city. Decades of work and hardships have bent her stature, wrinkled her hands, and left only a breath in her. She now struggles to carry a tray from the hall to the kitchen, yet none of these difficulties have made her give up her job, especially since the hall authorities are considerate of her condition.

Bakhtawar says she has become accustomed to work, and on the other hand, her family depends on the meager income she earns. She works from eight in the morning until three after midnight.

She faces various challenges to maintain this level of work, with the hardest being her return home. She has to cover the distance between the restaurant and her home in the darkness of the night in a society where, as she says, “women lose their sense of security.”

In a motherly tone, she says, “Working is better than begging.” Still, sometimes, she is forced to accept the money offered to her because, as she says, on the one hand, it’s Ramadan. There are no weddings in the hall where she works, and on the other hand, her family’s needs take priority, and Bakhtawar, with her bent and weak stature, has to fulfil those needs.

She roughly estimates that she is 62 years old, but she is not sure, and to justify this, she says, “I haven’t had the opportunity to count the years.” She has been working for as long as she can remember, and work has been something she has grown up with, but the current circumstances have made her describe it as “misfortune.”

Bakhtawar is referred to in her own definition as someone who brings “happiness” to herself. But this 62-year-old woman believes that her life is entangled with “misfortune.” She says, “My mother named me Bakhtawar so I could be happy, but misfortune does not leave me.”

Now that no weddings are being held in wedding halls, she also has no income and is almost unemployed. She says there is a lot of work on wedding nights, but the income from it also meets her needs, and besides, she is allowed to take leftover food home.

Bakhtawar, who has several children and has lost several of her children in infancy, says her two sons got married and live farther away from her. She receives no help from her sons. One of her daughters, according to her, “got married and went to her husband’s house.” She now lives with her two sons and one daughter, and all the responsibility of this four-member family is on Bakhtawar’s shoulders.

The challenges that women face are not summarized in levels of educational prohibitions; these challenges, and even more serious ones, have knocked women down for a long time. However, the challenges faced by women as heads of households are much more severe. Bakhtawar’s life is a clear example of this. Throughout her life, she has fought against the prevalent mindset that says women are not allowed to work, and she continues to struggle with this challenge.

In June 2023, Khama Press, in a research report titled “Investigating the Social and Economic Engagement of Women in Afghanistan,” divided the level of economic and social engagement of women before and after the collapse of the Afghan Republic system, reporting that not only has the position of women in terms of economic engagement regressed in society but also their position has been disrupted in family structures.

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