A Silent Revolution?

Women Business Owners Transform Afghanistan

There's a revolution brewing in Afghanistan. It is very silent. The revolutionary leaders are women--some 10,000 entrepreneurs who are using micro-loans to start beauty parlors, bakeries, handcraft shops and more. This in a country where women are more vulnerable than anywhere else.

Afghan women entrepreneurs meet with Laura Bush

in the city of Arzu in June 2008. (White House photo.)

Note these key points excerpted and condensed from The Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor:

• Women entrepreneurs are emerging from the isolation of war and the Taliban to help build a more prosperous nation.
• Per Suraya Parlika, founder of the All Afghan Women's Union: Entrepreneurship has restorative powers not only for women but also the nation.
• For many women, entrepreneurship skills are a gateway to greater sense of independence, allowing them to feel more entitled to their rights.
• The benefits are more than symbolic. Women are earning enough to support themselves. Women-owned businesses now provide employment and marketable skills to other women.
• Under the Taliban, millions of women were banned from working and going to school. Even today the idea of a woman owning a business is still taboo to many. Suraya Parlika has been shot at twice in three years while training 500 women to become entrepreneurs. Yet, the revolution continues to build.
• Per Paula Dobriansky, Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, U.S. Department of State: No country can be stable so long as only half of its population is free to succeed. And foreign stability through such things as women-owned businesses makes the U.S. safer.

Ms. Dobriansky recently remarked how the number of women entrepreneurs in Afghanistan is growing. She referred to meeting with women entrepreneurs on three separate occasions. The first time she met just two women who were setting up a micro-finance bank. The next meeting had to be held in the cafeteria of the U.S. embassy, a space large enough for 80 to 100 women, all owners of a business--from kites to a cement factory to furniture to rugs. The third time they met in the headquarters of a federation of women entrepreneurs.

"It was striking to us," Ms. Dobriansky said, "what a little targeted assistance could do to support this fundamental change from the time of the Taliban."

Some revolutions are loud and noisy. But in Afghanistan there is a revolution building quietly, led by women entrepreneurs. Stay tuned!

Its impact will hopefully reach you and me.

Quick Vue -- Women entrepreneurs in Afghanistan. (Approx. 3.5 minutes)

Quick Vue -- Five Afghan women business owners meet with women business owners in Oklahoma through a program called Peace Through Business. (Approx. 2 minutes)