Fading beauty, fading freedom: How the Taliban is silencing Afghan women by shutting down underground salons

Shut secret beauty salons in a month or face arrest (Image: AFP)

The Taliban has intensified its restrictions on Afghan women by targeting underground beauty salons operating in secret across the country. According to a report by The Guardian, female salon owners have been warned to shut their businesses within a month or risk arrest.

The crackdown marks a new phase in the group’s ongoing campaign to limit women’s rights in Afghanistan.

However, despite the Taliban’s 2023 directive to shut down beauty parlours in Afghanistan, many salons continued operating underground, resulting in the closure of around 12,000 businesses and leaving over 50,000 female beauticians unemployed. The move was part of a broader effort to enforce the group’s strict interpretation of Islamic law.

The Taliban has instructed community leaders and elders throughout the country to identify secret beauty salons and report their operators to the “vice and virtue" police.

Frestha, a mother of three and the sole breadwinner of her family, had been running her salon in secrecy since the ban, as she had no other means to support her children.

“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,” 38-year-old Frestha 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, I don’t think I can keep going because the risk is too high [but] I don’t know any other work. Our situation is very bad, but in this world there is no one to hear our voice or support us,” she added.

The condition of women in Afghanistan

Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed sweeping restrictions on Afghan women, echoing the oppressive policies of their previous rule from 1996 to 2001, despite initial promises of a more moderate approach.

Women have been effectively erased from public life: banned from most jobs, denied access to secondary and higher education, and barred from participating in political processes they once helped shape.

In 2020, Afghan women held over a quarter of the seats in Parliament and could even run for the presidency. Today, they are completely excluded from formal politics.

Daily life has grown increasingly restrictive. Beauty salons, once one of the few remaining public spaces for women, have been shut down, with the Taliban claiming such services contradict

Islamic principles and the financial burden on grooms' families during weddings. Women are also prohibited from entering gyms, parks, or any public spaces unaccompanied and must be fully covered in public at all times. Even speaking in public is off-limits.

Healthcare access is another mounting crisis. In many provinces, women are no longer allowed to be treated by male doctors, and the number of female healthcare workers is dwindling. As a result, Afghan women are living shorter, less healthy lives, according to a recent UN Women report.

Human rights groups warn that these policies amount to a de facto system of gender apartheid, where women's autonomy is not just restricted, it is systematically dismantled.