Kamila Sidiqi is an Afghan entrepreneur, government official, and the subject of the New York Times bestselling book, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana .
Sidiqi received her teaching certificate the same day the Taliban arrived in Kabul, rendering her unable to work. Without any means of supporting her family, the then 19-year-old turned to dressmaking. With the help of her sisters, she opened a tailoring school in their home to teach women to sew and provide employment after their training was completed. The venture went on to employ over 100 of Sidiqi's neighbours without attracting the Taliban's attention. [1]
In 2004, following the fall of the Taliban, Sidiqi set up Kaweyan Business Development Services to bring business, leadership, and entrepreneurial skills to women and men in remote rural communities and cities. [2] [3] In her role as CEO, Sidiqi travelled across a country where few women could venture without a male relative to escort them, and where aid workers often travel with armed guards or local police. [4] Kaweyan BDS was Afghanistan's first business development training company. [5] It trained 5,000 people (70 percent of them women) in business and leadership.[ citation needed ] Kaweyan Business Development Services later grew to include a dried fruit export business and a taxi cab service. [6] [7]
From 2014 to 2015, Sidiqi was on the board of NGO Hand in Hand Afghanistan (a part of the Hand in Hand International network), [8] an NGO that helps the rural poor in Afghanistan to turn their skills and potential into jobs. [5] She provided strategic direction to the organization, which has trained 22,000 micro-entrepreneurs (mostly women) who have gone on to create over 8,000 businesses. [9]
Sidiqi is a founding member of Leading Entrepreneurs of Afghanistan Development (LEAD). [10] Founded in 2013, the organization was renamed to Afghan Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AWCCI) in 2017. [11] She is also a member of a number of other influential international women’s associations, including the Steering Committee for the South Asia Women's Entrepreneurship Symposium (SAWES). [12]
From October 2014 to May 2017, she was the Presidential Deputy Chief of Staff for Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani. [6] [12] Since June 2017, she has served as the Deputy Minister for Trade Affairs. [12]
The treatment of women by the Taliban refers to actions and policies by two distinct Taliban regimes in Afghanistan which are either specific or highly commented upon, mostly due to discrimination, since they first took control in 1996. During their first rule of Afghanistan, the Taliban were notorious internationally for their misogyny and violence against women. In 1996, women were mandated to wear the burqa at all times in public. In a systematic segregation sometimes referred to as gender apartheid, women were not allowed to work, nor were they allowed to be educated after the age of eight. Women seeking an education were forced to attend underground schools, where they and their teachers risked execution if caught. They were not allowed to be treated by male doctors unless accompanied by a male chaperone, which led to illnesses remaining untreated. They faced public flogging and execution for violations of the Taliban's laws.
Dr. Massouda Jalal is the first woman in the history of Afghanistan who ran for the Office of the President of Afghanistan in 2002, 2004, and again in 2019. Dr. Jalal emerged as a leading voice of Afghan women after her election as the Representative to the 2002 Loya Jirga as she became one of the frontrunners for the position of Interim President of Afghanistan, opposite to ex-president Hamid Karzai.
Education in Afghanistan includes K–12 and higher education, which is under the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education. In 2021, there were nearly 10 million students and 220,000 teachers in Afghanistan. The nation still requires more schools and teachers. Soon after the Taliban take took the country in August 2021, they banned girls from secondary education. Some provinces still allow secondary education for girls despite the ban. In December 2022, the Taliban government also prohibited university education for females in Afghanistan, sparking protests and international condemnation. In December 2023, investigations were being held by the United Nations into the claim that Afghan girls of all ages were allowed to study at religious schools.
Human rights in Afghanistan are severely restricted, especially since Taliban's takeover of Kabul in August 2021. Women's rights and freedom are severely restricted as they are banned from most public spaces and employment. Afghanistan is the only country in the world to ban education for women over the age of eleven. Taliban's policies towards women are usually termed as gender apartheid. Minority groups such as Hazaras face persecution and eviction from their lands. Authorities have used physical violence, raids, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, enforced disappearances of activists and political opponents.
The American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) was a private university located in the Darulaman section of Kabul. Former students of AUAF live abroad and, as of 2022, there were plans to create a new AUAF campus in Qatar. AUAF was the country's first private, not-for-profit institution of higher education and was located in Kabul near the Darul Aman Palace and the Afghan Parliament.
Sakena Yacoobi is an Afghani activist known for her work for promoting access to education for women and children. She is the founder and executive director of the women-led NGO Afghan Institute of Learning. For her work, Yacoobi has received international recognition, including the 2013 Opus Prize, the 2015 WISE Prize, the 2016 Harold W. McGraw Prize in Education, and an honorary degree from Princeton University.
Women's rights in Afghanistan have varied greatly depending on the time period as well as the regime in power. After King Amanullah Khan's attempts to modernize the country in the 1920s, women officially gained equality under the 1964 Constitution. However, these rights were taken away in the 1990s through different temporary rulers such as the mujahideen and the Taliban during the Afghan civil war. During the first Taliban regime (1996–2001), women had very little to no freedom, specifically in terms of civil liberties. When the Taliban was overthrown by the United States following the September 11 attacks, women's rights gradually improved under the presidential Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Women were de jure equal to men under the 2004 Constitution.
Gayle Williams was an aid worker for SERVE Afghanistan of joint British and South African nationality. She was shot on her way to work in Kabul, Afghanistan by two men on a motorbike. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, claimed responsibility for her death and said she had been killed "because she was working for an organization which was preaching Christianity in Afghanistan".
The Afghan Women's Council (AWC) is a non-governmental, non-profit, and non-sectarian charitable organization that was established in 1986 with the primary objective of providing assistance to Afghan women and children. The organization's core mission is to empower women, enhance their living conditions, and bolster their socio-economic standing within society through active participation in various development initiatives. They also hope to increase awareness of human rights, women’s rights, refugee rights, children’s rights, peace-building and democracy issues within the Afghan context. The AWC is duly registered with both the Government of Pakistan and the Government of Afghanistan as a charitable non-governmental organization (NGO).
The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is a book by author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, published in March 2011 by HarperCollins. It documents the story of Kamila Sidiqi, a young female entrepreneur working during the years of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, a time when the rights of women were severely restricted. Dressmaker is the first book by Lemmon, who serves as deputy director of the Council on Foreign Relations' Women and Foreign Policy program. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, and The Christian Science Monitor, amongst other publications.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is an author who has written on the role of women and girls in foreign policy. She has held private sector roles in emerging technology for national security as well as financial services. She serves as an adjunct senior fellow at the Women and Foreign Policy Program with the Council on Foreign Relations and has written the New York Times bestsellers The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (2011), Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield (2015) and The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice (2021). A graduate of the University of Missouri and the Harvard Business School, Lemmon has covered a variety of topics such as women's entrepreneurship, women in the military, forced and child marriage, Syria and Afghanistan. She has also served as a board member of the Mercy Corps and the International Center for Research on Women, and as a member of the Bretton Woods Committee. She speaks Spanish, German, French and is conversant in Dari and basic Kurmanji.
Fatema Akbari is an Afghan and ethnic Hazara entrepreneur and women's rights advocate who is the founder of the Gulistan Sadaqat Company and non-governmental organization the Women Affairs Council. In 2011, she received the 10,000 Women Entrepreneurial Achievement Award.
Roya Mahboob is an Afghan businesswoman. She founded and is CEO of the Afghan Citadel Software Company, a full-service software development company based in Herat, Afghanistan. She has received attention for being among the first IT female CEOs in Afghanistan, where it is still relatively rare for women to work outside the home. On 18 April 2013, Mahboob was named to TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2013 for her work in building internet classrooms in high schools in Afghanistan and for Women's Annex, a multilingual blog and video site hosted by Film Annex. This was the 10th anniversary of the TIME special edition. The Women's Annex platform give the women of Afghanistan and Central Asia a platform to tell their stories to the world. The TIME magazine introduction to Mahboob was written by Sheryl Sandberg who is the chief operating officer of Facebook and the author of "Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead". U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Mahboob and other Afghan women entrepreneurs at the International Center for Women's Economic Development at the American University of Afghanistan. She is also known for her work with online film distribution platform and Web Television Network Film Annex on the Afghan Development Project. She is an advisor at the Forbes School of Business & Technology.
Rape is a major issue in Afghanistan. A number of human rights organizations have criticized the country's rape laws and their enforcement.
Sima Wali was one of the foremost Afghan human rights advocates in the world, serving as an international campaigner for the liberties and empowerment of refugee and internally displaced populations. She was the Chief Executive Officer of Refugee Women in Development (RefWID), Inc., a global non-profit organization that advocated for the civil rights of refugee women and girls fleeing from conflict and for their equitable reintegration into their societies. She was also the vice president of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, the world’s first feminist think tank.
Sanzar Kakar is an international entrepreneur and business leader. Kakar is the owner of a diversified number of professional businesses.
The Breadwinner is a 2017 animated drama film from Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon directed by Nora Twomey. Based on the best-selling novel by Deborah Ellis, the film was an international co-production among Canada, the Republic of Ireland and Luxembourg, and received a limited release on 17 November 2017.
Aziza Ahmadyar is an Afghan politician and women's rights activist. She also founded the Afghan Women's Resource Center. Currently, Ahmadyar is a Foreign Liaison Director for the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism in Afghanistan.
Fatima Aziz was an Afghan physician and politician. In 2005, she was elected to the lower house of parliament as representative of Kunduz province in Afghanistan's first free parliamentary election in decades. She was re-elected in the 2010 and 2018 elections. She served as an MP until her death from cancer in 2021.
The Taliban has ruled Afghanistan as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan since taking control by force in 2021, overthrowing the internationally recognized Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The takeover was widely criticized by the international community, and no countries have extended de jure diplomatic recognition to the new regime, despite nominally maintaining relations with Afghanistan. The Taliban has campaigned for international recognition since the takeover. Several countries have vowed never to recognize the Islamic Emirate, and others have said they will do so only if human rights in the country are respected. Some countries have accredited Taliban diplomats at the chargé d'affaires level despite not recognizing the Islamic Emirate. In September 2023, the People's Republic of China became the first country to formally name a new ambassador to the country since the takeover, and in January 2024 recognized the Taliban's envoy to China; however, the PRC still does not formally recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.