Women, sexual harassment, and other challenges faced in the job-seeking process
By Mahtab Safi* and Freshta Ghani
In June 2023, Farida*, an economics graduate with two years of work experience, had been job hunting for a year and a half in Sar-e-Pol province. The 32-year-old says that finding a job has been as challenging as finding a needle in a haystack. She submitted more than 30 job applications before she was shortlisted for a position as a social worker in a local organization and went to take a test at their office. Farida was the only woman competing against eight men for this position when a man she believed was the head of the organization entered the room to oversee the exam. After glancing at Farida, he quietly asked her to come to his office after the exam.
Seated behind his desk, the executive greeted her with a smile. As Farida began discussing her work experience as a social worker, the organization’s head interjected, saying, “Your clothes fit you well. Are you married or single?” Farida tells Zan Times that she replied that she was the mother of five children, he commented, “Given your physique and looks, it’s hard to believe you have five children.”
Shaken by his words, Farida tried to steer the conversation back to her professional experience, but the man interrupted her again: “You are definitely going to be appointed as an employee in this organization, I assure you,” she remembers him saying. “If you can spend one night with me, you can be appointed to higher positions and get any position you want.”
Farida quickly left his office, tears streaming down her face, but she heard his voice behind her saying, “What would you lose if you spent one night with me?” In a phone interview with Zan Times, she says, “I walked home for an hour, crying. I was deeply affected by the incident.”
Farida continues to look for a job. She’s the head of her family as her husband suffers from severe headaches, which prevent him from working. They need her to find a good-paying job not only to put food on the family’s table, but to also afford his treatment.
Before the Taliban seized power, Farida earned 20,000 afghani a month as a social worker at an NGO in the city of Sar-e Pol. Her salary was enough to cover her family’s necessary expenses. After losing her job after the Taliban return, their financial situation has deteriorated drastically. “The most significant concern of my life revolves around securing food for my kids. If I manage to provide them breakfast, I start worrying about their dinner, and once they’ve had dinner, the anxiety for their next day’s lunch sets in,” she worries.
Farida is one of the 12 women who spoke to Zan Times about the immense struggles, and often fruitless efforts, in finding new jobs. The women, who live in Kandahar, Ghor, Sar-e Pol, Bamyan, Kabul, and Samangan provinces, all had jobs before August 2021, but lost them after the Taliban regained power. It was just two weeks after the Taliban had taken Kabul that they banned women from working in government offices. In the Taliban’s effort to remove women from the social sphere, they closed schools and universities to girls over 12 years old, and have imposed more and more restrictions on women working in positions where they can interact with men.
As a result, a huge number of skilled, educated women are now out of work. In 2020, women accounted for around one quarter of the 415,000 civil service employees, according to statistics from the Central Statistics Office. Virtually all of them have since been fired by the Taliban. In addition, the Taliban banned women from working with national and foreign NGOs in December 2022. Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesperson, told the BBC that the ban was issued to “preserve the dignity and chastity” of women. Taliban decrees aimed at restricting what women can do in Afghanistan keep coming. On July 6, 2023, they announced a ban on women working in women’s beauty salons.
Sahar Rezaie* worked as an administrator at the Ministry of Defence before the Taliban return. Her monthly salary of 35,000 afghani meant that the young widow could comfortably provide for her family, though she wasn’t paid for four months before the republican government collapsed. Then, she went into hiding for five months, fearing that the Taliban might punish her for her work with the Ministry of Defence. She’s tried to find a job anywhere, including NGOs and even the Taliban’s Defence Ministry after learning that it was allowing some women to work in the military sector. In March 2022, Sahar heard back from an employee of a private institution who said that he could help her. After collecting her work documents, he promised to find her a job in a foreign embassy with a salary of US$800 a month. However, he set two conditions, as Sahar recounts, “The first is that I should have a romantic relationship with him and the second is that I must give him $200 of my salary every month.”
Even after Sahar rejected his conditions and asked him not to contact her, the man continued to harass her. “For several months, he would call me around midnight. I would hang up, but he would call again,” she tells Zan Times in a phone interview. Finally, Sahar was forced to change her phone number.
Like Sahar and Farida, Zulikha*, 27, has unsuccessfully searched for work. She has been unemployed for a year and a half though she has seven years of experience working in non-governmental organizations in Samangan province. Despite sending out more than 20 job applications, she’s never heard back from even one institution. “When I check the websites, the posts that are advertised are mostly for men. Yet, I still apply to the few offices that advertise for both women and men, but they never shortlist me,” she tells Zan Times. “When I speak with some of the organizations, they tell me that the Taliban do not allow women to work, and if they were to hire me, they would be concerned about respecting the Taliban rules for male companions and hijab.”
Asma* talks for all the women interviewed by Zan Times when she says that there is no place for women in any government or non-governmental organization in the province. Though she has four years of government work experience in Ghor province, she’s been unable to find a new job. “When we send a CV for a job application, it feels like we’re throwing the CV into the sea,” she tells Zan Times. “It gets lost.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Mahtab Safi is the pseudonym of a Zan Times journalist in Afghanistan.
