Afghanistan: Women Entrepreners

Entrepreneurial spirit is the motivating force behind Gayle Tzemach Lemmon's book about Kamila, a young woman who puts her career goals of being a professor on hold when the Taliban take hold of Kabul. Because of the new rules forbidding women from working outside the home and the ongoing civil war, Kamila's family is split apart and their hope for survival depends on the bravery, inventiveness and skill of Kamila and her young siblings. She starts a dressmaking business in their family home, and turns it into a community hub, training center, and career. She continues her work now, helping to build more businesses run by women.

One of the powerful and inspirational lessons of this story is that Kamila and her family manage this in Kabul, under the Taliban, with no outside help. Not only does the dressmaking business help Kamila's own family, she ends up employing about 100 other neighborhood women and girls. This is for Kamila a conscious decision, based on a sense of responsibility for her community and country as well as for family.

There are a few ways this book builds on insights from previous book club discussions. Kamila's story illustrates the thesis of Half the Sky: that the effect of investing in girls' education and entrepreneurship can be a powerful force, and can help lift entire communities out of poverty. Her story also illustrates how important it is (and how common it is) for women in these restrictive societies to have the support of their husbands, fathers and brothers. We discussed this in the case of Iran most recently. In Kamila's case, her father was a staunch advocate for his daughters, and he insisted that they all complete their education. Her brother worked hard and at personal risk to support her business by working as her escort, helping with the purchase of supplies and with the embroidery work. A male neighbor who worked for the Taliban warned Kamila she needed to be extra careful about Taliban searches in the neighborhood.

We decided to read this book in part because of the HRW report that was just released, "I Had to Run Away", documenting the continued discrimination against women in Afghanistan under laws against "moral crimes". Women who have escaped abusive marriages or who have been raped or forced into prostitution are imprisoned under these laws, instead of being protected from their abusers. This is a particularly useful juxtaposition, I hope. In Kamila's words:

Money is power for women. If women have their own income to bring to the family, they can contribute and make decisions. Their brothers, their husbands, and their entire families will have respect for them... if we can train a woman who never had the chance to study, and she can start her own business, it will be good for the whole family as well as for the community. Her work will create jobs for other people and pay for both her boys and her girls to be educated.

A  few other very notable things in this story:

• the path-breaking work of Samantha Reynolds and the UN Habitat strategy of empowering local women to rebuild their communities
• the business consulting work that is Kamila's new project: Kaweyan
• the international organizations that support entrepreneurs like Kamila: business professionals supporting entrepreneurs in conflict-affected areas such as BPeace; humanitarian organizations that support training for local businesswomen such as Mercy Corps 
• of course, the rigorous reporting and focused advocacy work of HRW