GENEVA — Women in Afghanistan now hold just 5.1 percent of jobs in the country, a collapse of more than two-thirds from the 16.5 percent participation rate recorded in 2020, according to a new International Labour Organization report released Monday. The ILO, the United Nations' labour agency, called the situation one of "severe exclusion" and said measures to address it are urgently needed.
The Taliban returned to power in August 2021. In the five years since, the group has barred women from secondary and university education, banned them from most government employment and restricted their movement without a male guardian. The ILO report directly attributed the collapse in female workforce participation to those restrictions on education and employment.
"Afghanistan cannot build a resilient labour market while such a large share of its population remains excluded from economic activity," said Tite Habiyakare, the ILO's senior coordinator and head of its Office for Afghanistan. The figure places Afghanistan second-last in the world for female employment, with only Yemen recording a lower rate.
Male employment moved in the opposite direction. While women were pushed out of the formal economy, male employment expanded rapidly over the same period, the ILO said, without specifying an exact figure for male participation. The contrast makes Afghanistan an extreme outlier on the global distribution of labour by gender.
Overall Afghan employment rose 14 percent from a low point in 2022, reaching 8.5 million workers in 2026, the ILO said. The recovery has not kept pace with rapid population growth driven in part by large-scale returns of Afghans from neighbouring countries, including Pakistan, which pushed hundreds of thousands of Afghans back across the border during an expulsion campaign.
The result is a labour market growing in absolute numbers but shrinking relative to the population that needs it, with women almost entirely absent from its formal ranks. The 8.5 million employed figure covers all workers; women's 5.1 percent share translates to roughly 425,000 women in employment in a country whose total population exceeds 40 million.
One anomaly has emerged from the exclusion. The United Nations Development Programme reported that the number of women-owned businesses in Afghanistan has increased tenfold since the Taliban takeover. The UNDP attributed the rise to women being shut out of most formal professions, forcing some to turn to self-employment and small enterprise as the only viable economic channel remaining to them. The businesses are often home-based and operate informally, limiting their scale and visibility.
UN Women, tracking the same period, has described the continued social and economic exclusion of women as likely to produce cumulative economic losses for Afghanistan. Excluding half the workforce from formal employment reduces a country's productive capacity and its ability to grow tax revenues, fund public services or attract foreign investment.
The ILO's findings come as international engagement with Afghanistan remains deeply constrained. Most Western governments and the United Nations do not formally recognize the Taliban administration. A series of Taliban decrees since 2021—including a November 2022 ban on women working for NGOs and a December 2022 ban on university education for women—progressively closed off routes that had allowed some women to maintain employment even after the initial takeover.
Afghanistan's economy deteriorated sharply after the Taliban takeover triggered the freezing of roughly $7 billion in Afghan central bank reserves held in the United States and the suspension of most international development aid that had previously funded a large share of the government budget and public services. The contraction hit women's employment especially hard because many women had worked in internationally funded sectors—government administration, education and health—that either collapsed or were closed to them by decree.
The ILO did not specify what measures it is calling on member states or the Taliban administration to adopt. The Taliban has not indicated any willingness to reverse the restrictions on women's education or employment. International leverage remains limited in the absence of formal recognition and with most bilateral aid suspended.
