Kabul:
Thousands of beauty salons across Afghanistan were set to close for good on Tuesday following an order from Taliban authorities that cut off one of women’s few income streams, as well as a cherished space for socializing.
Since taking power in August 2021, the Taliban government has banned girls and women from high schools and universities, banned them from parks, carnivals and gyms, and ordered them to cover themselves in public.
But an order issued last month forces the closure of thousands of women-run salons across the country — often the only source of income for households — and bans one of the few remaining opportunities for them to socialize outside the home.
“We used to come here to talk about our future together. Now even this right has been taken away from us,” said Bahara, a client of a hair salon in Kabul.
“Women are not allowed to enter places of entertainment, so what can we do? Where can we have fun? Where can we gather to meet?”
Last week, security officials fired into the air and used fire hoses in Kabul to disperse dozens of women protesting the order.
At the end of June, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice gave salons until Tuesday to close, as the grace period would allow them to run out of stock.
It said it placed the order because extravagant sums spent on makeovers were putting poor families in trouble and that some of the treatments in the salons were un-Islamic.
Too much makeup prevented women from washing before prayers, the ministry said, while eyelash extensions and hair weaving were also banned.
A copy of the order that AFP saw said it was “based on verbal instructions from Supreme Leader” Hibatullah Akhundzada.
Beauty salons have mushroomed in Kabul and other Afghan cities in the 20 years that US-led forces have occupied the country.
They were seen as a safe place to gather and socialize away from men, and provided vital business opportunities for women.
Thousands of female government employees lost their jobs as the Taliban took over or are paid to stay at home.
But the ban on beauty salons is causing an additional 60,000 women to lose their income from work in some 12,000 salons, according to the Afghanistan Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
A report last month to the UN Human Rights Council by Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur for Afghanistan, said the plight of women and girls in the country was “one of the worst in the world”.
“Severe, systematic and institutionalized discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of the Taliban’s ideology and rule, which also raises concerns that they may be responsible for gender apartheid,” Bennett said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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