Over the last decade, Afghan women have become symbolic barometers for the sociopolitical success or failure of international intervention in Afghanistan. Journalists, some academics, and many policy analysts from the West portray Afghan women as oppressed by local social, political and cultural conditions, only in the process of emergent liberation through international intervention. Such descriptions of Afghan women fail to provide a nuanced portrait of their lives and they do not address the diversity of their experiences. Furthermore, the extensive role of Euro-American liberal feminism is part of US-led imperialism and neocolonial aid and development in Afghanistan. Such feminism is imperialist because it links women's rights with US-led military operations in Afghanistan, rather than questioning the scope and scale of military occupation and international development interventions.
Much gender-based liberation through development connects women's power and authority to their ability to earn. While earning an income can improve the overall wealth of a family, women's economic labour alone will not improve their lives or status within their homes or communities. Women throughout Afghanistan have historically earned income through carpet weaving and other handicrafts, and continue to do so. Such paid labour fits within existing patriarchal structures rather than subverting them.
International funds channeled into Afghanistan from 2002 have facilitated new opportunities for Afghan women and men, unavailable under the earlier Taliban regime. However, the role of international aid and development is also fraught with US-led geopolitical interests associated with Afghanistan's strategic location within both Central Asia and Southasia, and economic interests through the country's extensive and largely untapped mineral resources.Afghan women experience extensive war-related hardships along with entrenched patriarchy and corresponding gender-based discrimination. Yet the US-led geopolitical framing of Afghan women's 'liberation' or 'saving' by international militaries and development is rife with contradictions and inaccuracies that rely on narrow representations. Geopolitically-driven development projects rarely take into consideration the specificities of Afghanistan, and the many diverse societies within it. Gender-based development projects tend to focus on women rather than incorporate a nuanced understanding of gender roles and relations.
Many policy and international non-government organisation (INGO) reports on Afghan women identify their social and political gains since the fall of the Taliban, coinciding with the US-led international military, aid, and development effort. Other accounts criticise these efforts for stifling the potential of Afghan women, and point to the increasing backlash against them throughout the country. Some researchers suggest that Afghan women are regularly caught between the social engineering efforts of international organisations and the gendered expectations of their own communities, which can at times run counter to internationally-driven vicissitudes.