Few women in the country have not lost any male relatives in successive wars. And many husbands, fathers, sons and brothers have lost their jobs or seen their incomes plummet due to a deepening economic crisis.
AFP has produced a series of portraits of women in major Afghan cities - Kabul, Herat and Kandahar - who are trying by all means to keep their households afloat by working.
"In these difficult times, it was my work that made me happy," Shafari Shapari, 40, a baker, told AFP. "My husband is unemployed and stays at home. I am able to feed my children," she says.
Women were excluded from most public jobs. Or else they saw their wages cut and were ordered to stay at home.
They are also often the first to be fired from struggling private companies, especially those unable to provide workplace segregation as demanded by the Taliban.
But some jobs remain open to them.
Rozina Sherzad, 19, is one of the few female journalists able to continue working, despite growing restrictions on women in the profession.
"But my family is with me. If my family were against my work, I don't think life would continue to have any meaning in Afghanistan," she says.
A woman pictured by AFP took up beekeeping after her husband lost his job.
Even before the Taliban took over, Afghanistan was a deeply conservative and patriarchal country. Progress on women's rights over the past two decades has been largely confined to cities.
Women usually cover their hair with scarves. The burqa - compulsory under the first Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001 - continued to be widely worn, especially outside the capital, Kabul.
Earlier this year, however, the religious police ordered women to cover themselves completely in public, including their faces.
