Afghan women break barriers

By Mathhew Pennington
Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan — Entrepreneur Sara Rahmani picks a brown burqa-style dress from the rack and, holding it in front of her face, shows with a broad smile how she refashioned it for post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Sara Rahmani sells re-fashioned burqas at her clothing shop in Kabul, where the 36-year-old former refugee is among the growing number of Afghan women going into business. Rahmani's company, Sara Afghan, is still struggling to make ends meet, but is busy with orders from two American clients for 100 blouses and 100 sets of duvet covers and sheets, from which Rahmani hopes to make about $2,000 profit. David Guttenfelder • Associated Press

The 36-year-old former refugee is among the growing number of Afghan women going into business, capitalizing on new opportunities in a thriving, yet still male-dominated economy three years after the fall of the Islamist government.

A smattering of small textile and handicraft workshops, boutiques, beauty parlors and even a soccer ball factory — run by women and employing women — have sprung up around the capital. The country's first female business association — set up with foreign funding 18 months ago — says it has 500 members.

Barred from education and jobs during the five years of Taliban rule, women now have the right, at least on paper, to pursue careers of their choosing. But illiteracy among 86 percent of adult women and cultural constraints still stands in their way.

Men are traditionally regarded as the breadwinners, usually inheriting all the property within families.

According to the United Nations, the per-capita income of Afghan women is about one-third what it is for men. A recent survey of 360 rural households by a Kabul-based research group found that less than 2 percent of women owned land in their own right.

Mina Sherzoy, head of the government's department of Women's Entrepreneurship Development, said if women want to get money to start a business, they typically need financial support or collateral from a male relative.

"There are barriers, and they will be lifted slowly," she said. "We are recovering from war and devastation and Taliban repression. ... But there's nothing in Shariah (Islamic law) that says women can't do business."

Rahmani started making clothes during years as a refugee in neighboring Pakistan. She returned to Afghanistan last year, and with a $35,000 loan from her brother in the United States, set up shop in a cramped, two-story terrace.

After seven months, she employs 70 women and two men.

Across town, another cottage industry makes quality leather balls for soccer, volleyball and handball — hand-stitched by about 130 women working from home, many of them widowed during a quarter-century of war.

Aziza Mohmmand, 45, who ran a secret girls' school at her house during the Taliban rule and heads an Afghan aid group to help women, said she got the idea two years ago when she saw a young boy on a Kabul street trying to sell a homemade ball. She spoke at her Kabul office, above the din of a generator that drives a machine used to cut out hexagons of leather for stitching together.

Her company produces more than 1,000 balls a month sold under the name of the aid group, Humanitarian Assistance for Women. It supplies balls to local markets and the Afghan Olympic association.

Wages are paltry, but with few factories and job opportunities for women in the sprawling city of between 3 and 4 million people, they're welcome. Women earn 32 Afghanis (64 cents) for each ball they stitch — less if the quality is not so good.

A new worker can take two days to stitch a ball, but those with experience can make four a day. The factory sells the balls for about 300 Afghanis ($6) each.

"Before this we had no job," said 16-year-old Morsal, as she stitched a ball. "I'm happy we got training and have this skill."