Afghan security forces have dispersed a rally in Kabul by dozens of black-cloaked women protesting against a Taliban edict shutting down hair salons and beauty parlours by August 2nd, thereby shuttering one of the few places where women can congregate. As the women chanted “Work, Food, Freedom”, turbaned police attacked them using truncheons, stun guns and fire hoses, and fired shots into the air.
Taliban officials say hair styling, plucking eyebrows and painting nails are un-Islamic and a waste of money. They object, in particular, to traditional ceremonial preparations for bridal parties in advance of weddings. Salons were banned during the first period of Taliban rule, which ran from 1996 to 2001.
The Taliban and their supporters consider salons to be western imports and symbols of the country’s westernised middle class, which grew from zero to an estimated 10-15 per cent in a population of 40 million under the regime that was ousted after 20 years in 2021. The expansion of education for both men and women during this period fostered the emergence of an urban middle class which administered the country and ran private businesses.
Conflict had driven the Afghan middle class of the 1980s and 1990s to flee the country while the process of creating a new middle class was at least partly driven by educated and employed women. They urged their children to opt for the western model and eschew the Taliban’s narrow teachings and oppressive practices. Consequently, the Taliban regard as enemies upwardly mobile women and the middle class and have systematically demolished the institutions and facilities that had freed women and allowed the middle class to re-establish itself and flourish. Many middle class Afghans who have remained in the country have lost jobs and homes and have been reduced to penury. Salons have been a refuge for women otherwise confined to their homes.
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The ban will shutter 12,000 salons across the country, 3,000 in Kabul alone, and put 60,000 female employees out of work. The female-run salons had been one of the few businesses where women had found jobs after the Taliban returned to power nearly two years ago.
Since then, the Taliban have compelled girls and women to wear conservative dress and limited travel without a male escort; prohibited girls and women from attending secondary schools and universities; excluded women from civil service and private employment; barred them from public gardens and baths, amusement parks and gyms; and banned them from working for United Nations and international and local humanitarian relief organisations.
The Taliban have fired female judges and nullified divorces granted by them to women abused by their husbands, and shut down the US-based Women for Afghan Women.
