Taliban authorities have ordered community leaders to identify and report clandestine underground beauty salons, threatening arrest within one month. Official closures of all salons in August 2023 shuttered 12,000 businesses and eliminated more than 50,000 female beautician jobs. Many women continued to run secret salons to support families and earn income. One woman described being the sole breadwinner for a sick husband and three children and the emotional reward of helping women feel beautiful. The renewed crackdown compounds bans since August 2021 that prevent women from most paid work, secondary and university education, and public life, which human rights groups call gender apartheid.
When the Taliban closed our salons, I was the only breadwinner in my family; my husband was sick, and I had three children whose expenses I had to cover, she said. But also I kept working because I feel so good when I could bring beauty back to a woman. When a woman looked at herself in the mirror and smiled, her happiness became my happiness.
Now, the Taliban have said that they intend to root out and eliminate these underground businesses, issuing orders to community leaders and elders across the country that they must identify clandestine beauty salons and report those running them to the vice and virtue police. Frestha, a 38-year-old mother of three young children, said she had been operating her beauty salon business in secret since they were banned in 2023 because she had no choice but to work and no other way of earning money.
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