The challenges faced by women-owned companies in Afghanistan under COVID-19 and Taliban

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic and the shift of power to the Taliban have negatively affected women-owned companies. This study aimed to explore the external and internal challenges of women-owned businesses from March 2020 to January 2022 in Afghanistan. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted from December 2021 to January 2022 with 29 women-owned company owners and chief executive officers (CEOs) based in five provinces of Afghanistan. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The themes are COVID-19 external challenges: movement restriction, inability to access the market, and financial issues. COVID-19 internal challenges: financial and production problems. Taliban governance external challenges: regulation on women’s activities, economic crisis, and market downturn, and Taliban governance internal challenges: financial issues, production issues, and staff mental wellbeing. The study concluded that challenges due to the COVID-19 and Taliban governance presented strong shocks to women-owned companies that may precipitate the closure of these companies or the immigration of businesswomen.


Introduction
Afghanistan is one of the low-income countries with unique cultures and customs in West South Asia (The World Bank, 2022a). This country has experienced deprivation and insecurity for decades. Since this country is patriarchal, women have been severely deprived of their fundamental rights throughout history (Afghanistan: Women's Economic, Political, Social Status Driven by Cultural Norms, 2021). Nevertheless, in the last century, governments tried to facilitate the presence of ABOUT THE AUTHORS Tayeba Hashemy has a master degree in economics from Afghanistan. She is currently working as a program manager and economic consultant in private consultancy. Her research interest is buniness environment and women issues. Rajeev Shrestha has a Bachelor's degree in Pharmacy from Nepal. He is currently working as a consultant pharmacy officer for Palliative care SUNITA-Project in Nepal and serves as an academic editor for PLOS ONE. His research interest is pharmaceutical public health and global social and health issues.
women outside the home (education, social and economic activities). Amanullah Khan (1929Khan ( -1919 made girls ' education compulsory, Zahir Shah (1973-1933 removed all gender discrimination, and during the Soviet period , girls attended co-educational schools, and many women joined the labor market. When the Mujahideen (1995Mujahideen ( -1992 took power, some girls' schools were closed, and the hijab was made compulsory for women (Afghanistan: Women's Economic, Political, Social Status Driven by Cultural Norms, 2021), then in 1996 when the Taliban came to power, they closed all girls' schools, and women were completely deprived of their rights (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, 2021). However, after the defeat of the Taliban and the establishment of the republican government in 2001, women began to participate in the country's economic activities. The country also started to experience economic growth along with the active support of foreign aid (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, 2021). The new constitution developed by the republic's government in 2003 allowed women to work like men, and there were no obstacles for them (Wafeq et al., 2019). In this case, to protect women against any discrimination in the workplace or entering economic activities, the 45 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2004 and the Law on the Elimination of It legalized violence against women were adopted (in 2009) (Wafeq et al., 2019).
Since then, women have been actively involved in self-initiated entrepreneurial businesses and as employees in private and government organizations. It is reported that women covered up to 21.7% of the total labor force in the country in 2021 (The World Bank, 2022b). Their contribution as employees and entrepreneurs has made a very significant impact on the rapid development of the country's economy (The World Bank, 2022b). Typically, women entrepreneurs are defined as the women or a group of women who initiate, organize and operate a business enterprise, also termed women-owned businesses/companies (National W, Agenda B, 2021). According to Afghanistan Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AWCCI), about 56,910 women-owned businesses were registered in 34 provinces till March 2021, where 4.3% of which are licensed and 95.7% are not (Wafeq, 2017). Women-owned companies (Licensed and unlicensed) started in the handicraft sector, and in 2021 they are operating in different sectors, such as clothing/handicraft, food processing, services, education, agriculture, healthcare, construction, fruit preservation, trading, media, IT, logistics, and jewelry (manufacturing and selling). Most of these businesses were initially financed by private funding (licensed: 89.9% and unlicensed: 71.2%) (Wafeq, 2017).
Despite the valued contribution, women were not wholly receiving support for their work outside the home due to the cultural and social norms of the community (Wafeq et al., 2019). Moreover, Wafeq et al. reported that women's businesses suffer insecurity, lack of access to finance, poor market information, inadequate access to raw materials, basic infrastructure, male-dominated society, corruption, and lack of educational credentials (European Parliament, 2021). Furthermore, the introduction of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 has further deteriorated women-owned economic activities and involvement in outdoor activities. It confined them inside the home and added the responsibility of taking care of their family members, which prevented them from continuing their outdoor job and self-owned business. Additionally, while women struggled with ongoing unfavorable social and cultural norms and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Taliban seized power again in August 2021. In the former Taliban regime (1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001), women were not allowed to study, work or leave home alone; this suggested to women the likelihood of women's work rights being again at risk of being violated by the government (Maguire & Delahunt, 2017). These restrictions on women seemed to recur when the Taliban returned to power after 20 years in 2021 (August 15); for example, girls are not allowed to attend school (Human Rights Watch, 2022). Since the government's present attitude towards women was unclear at the point of this study, it seemed likely that women would experience insecurity and find it challenging to plan the future of their business (Aljazeera, 2022).
With increasing challenges and the failure of the government or other support structures to address them, women may lose their willingness and ability to continue doing business in Afghanistan or be encouraged to migrate to other countries. Accordingly, examining the challenges of these companies from the beginning of the COVID-19 to the Taliban's domination of the country is a step toward evidencing how this crisis may erode the efforts on women empowerment led by the international community and women themselves over the past 20 years (Esfandiari & Sarwar, 2022). In addition, several types of research have reported that women-owned businesses were suffering massively from the COVID-19 pandemic over men globally (Choi et al., 2022;Torres et al., 2021a). It seems imperative to explore the situation of women-owned companies in Afghanistan. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the challenges of women-owned businesses during COVID-19 and the Taliban by identifying external and internal challenges. The finding of this study is supposed to help the current government and international communities to understand the situation of women-owned companies in Afghanistan and support them.

Study design
Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews was conducted with 29 owners/chief executive officers (CEOs) of women-owned companies from 25 December 2021, to 20 January 2022. This sample is contained from 5 major provinces in 5 different geographical zones.

Ethical review and informed concerned
Ethical approval was obtained from Human Research Ethics Committee of the Afghanistan National Charity Organization for Special Diseases (ANCOSD), Kabul, Afghanistan (AF, ANCOSD, HREC, 07, 12/12/2021) before data collection. All the invited participants were informed verbally regarding the study and their consent was sought before conducting an interview.

Study participants and sample selection
Participants in this study were the owners/CEOs of active women-owned companies in 5 provinces, namely Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar, Jalalabad, and Herat (Temporarily or completely closed companies were not included in the current sample due to lack of access to communication channels). These companies operate in different sectors such as handicrafts, information & communication, food, trade, education, manufacturing, and healthcare. Companies were selected based on the following criteria: they are actively operating, registered with the government, and have been operational for over two years. The contact details of 335 women-owned companies in 5 provinces were obtained from the health economics department of Afghanistan National Charity Organization for Special Diseases (ANCOSD), Kabul, Afghanistan. All companies eligible for inclusion and confirming consent were included for interviews. TH and SMH called each company to ascertain whether they met the inclusion criteria and, if so, to recruit for interviews. Based on the collected information, 141 (42%) companies did not answer, or their numbers were off' with 'Among them, 141 (42%) companies did not respond or pick up the phone call. 54 (16%) companies were temporarily closed. 34 (10%) companies met the sampling criteria, but their owners have immigrated to other countries. 32 (10%) companies did not meet the requirements, for example, having less than two years of operational experience and/or continuing their business informally (Unlicensed). 45 (13%) companies were not interested in the interview. As a result of the above process, 29 (9%) companies eventually participated in the interviews (Figure 1).

Instrument
In this study, the questions were developed by researchers based on the final report of the Afghanistan Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry and were designed as open-end questions (Esfandiari & Sarwar, 2022). The questions were divided into three parts. The first part contained two questions about interviewees (e.g., age and education), the second part contained three questions about the women-owned companies (Province, sector, and company size), and the third part contained four questions and addressed the main questions of the study, they are listed below (Table 1). Two pilot interviews were conducted face to face in Kabul to validate the interview schedule. Pilot testing resulted that all questions were sufficiently clear for interviewees, and no additional supportive questions were needed..

Data collection procedure
Researchers having 5 years of experience in the KII and in-depth interviews conducted this interview in 5 provinces. One interview was conducted in each company with its owner/CEO. As traveling around the cities was not tenable, we decided to interview through the phone. Prior to analysis, each interview was transcribed separately in local languages (Dari and Pashto) and then translated into English.

Data analysis
First, the participants' demographic data were analyzed numerically (percentages). Then, the thematic analysis developed by Braun and Clarke method was used to analyze the collected data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The steps are as follows:

Familiarization
Each interview was read twice by researchers actively and critically to understand the entire data (Torres et al., 2021a), and the critical issues were highlighted in each interview.

Generating initial codes
Data coding was performed to identify and provide labels for features of the data that may be relevant to the research questions (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The theory-driven approach for coding was used.

Searching for themes
The codes were organized into relevant themes. We used the mind-map method to visualize the codes to avoid interposition between themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Although some of the codes were the same in the four questions, the type of challenges related to the code was different. Therefore, the codes for each question were organized into relevant themes and presented separately. The 211 codes were grouped into 11 themes. The themes are presented in Table 1.

Reviewing themes
First, the themes were reviewed to explore whether the theme works concerning the data, and then, themes were reviewed with the entire data set. Codes were compared with the relevant themes to ensure the relevance between each theme and codes. The organized themes captured the most important and relevant elements of the data.

Defining and naming themes
Researchers reviewed the essence of collated data separately to justify that each theme is presented accurately to demonstrate the relevant narrative. The themes were presented as follows: Table 2 provides the demographic details of the interviewees (Owner/CEO of women-owned companies). The majority of the participants (55.2%) were over 30 years old and had a bachelor's or higher degree (51.7%) ( Table 2). Table 3 shows the demographic details of the women-owned companies. Of the participating companies, the largest number were located in Kabul (44.8%), operating in handicraft sectors (37.9%), and were small-size companies (65.5%) ( Table 3).

Themes
The results obtained around each research question are presented separately under the major relevant themes. Challenges were divided into four groups. Two research questions related to COVID-19 challenges and two research questions examined challenges related to Taliban governance.

External challenges of women-owned companies during COVID-19
The dataset "T1EC: movement restriction" reflected the conditions due to the pandemic applied by the government, which interrelate to the theme "T2EC: Inability to access market", where business and border closures caused limitations in the accessibility to domestic and international markets for companies. The dataset "T3XC: Lack of financial resources" reflects the results of T1EC and T2EC; during the COVID-19 pandemic, companies needed financial support from national and international organizations or governments to cover their expenses.

Theme 1EC: Movement restriction
Twelve participants reported that since the government applied the movement restriction across the country, especially in the large cities (Kabul, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar, and Jalalabad), their businesses were temporarily closed, and all their staff was quarantined. Moreover, twelve other participants continued their work from home or outside the main company site.
Participant 21: My staff was working from home, but it was not easy to manage them. During the production process, each product needs several rounds of quality checks.
The above comment showed that still some businesses were not closed, but difficulties faced production based on the company norms. In general, the movement restriction during the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the significant external challenges for these companies.

Theme 2EC: Inability to access market
Twenty-four participants reported that their access to the international market was halted during the pandemic. They could not export their products to their customers out of the country. Moreover, fourteen participants reported that their sales in domestic markets also decreased.
Participant 14: The price of raw materials in the local market was raised. Moreover, the import of raw materials took several months. This comment shows that the price of raw materials is not the only problem; the interval for delivery is another major challenge for some of these companies which import their raw materials from foreign countries.

Theme 3EC: Lack of financial resource
Twenty-four participants reported that they did not have access to any financial support to prepare raw materials or sell their products in the market since the outbreak of the COVID-19. In addition, the price of raw materials also increased due to the pandemic, even in the local markets.
Participant 15: That the options for financing are very limited for businesswomen.
The above comment raised by some participants suggests that the limited options for financing are so limited for businesswomen, which added to further financial challenges during the pandemic.

Internal challenges for women-owned companies during COVID-19
The dataset around "T1IC: insufficient budget" indicated that the budget for production shifted to the lowest level during the pandemic. These events were followed by the theme "T2IC: supply of raw materials", in which the shortage of raw materials faced and the prices were raised in the local market.

Theme 1IC: Insufficient budget
Twenty-three participants reported a decrease in their income, and they could not retain their previous income. Simultaneously they were obligated to pay the staff salary and space rent.
Participant 19: My business was closed for three months, . . . , I paid my employees' salary from my own savings because it was the only channel of income for them.
As shown in the above comment, nine participants reported that maintaining staff salaries was a significant challenge for their companies, and eight of them reported this challenge with space rent.
Participant 1: After four months of quarantine, we do not have the budget for production.
Additionally, twelve participants reported that they were faced with a lack of liquidity during and after the pandemic.

Theme 2IC: Supply of raw materials
Sixteen participants reported an increase in the price of raw materials as a challenge for production. Companies that continued production during the pandemic faced higher prices for raw materials in the domestic market. For example, seven participants reported a shortage in raw materials.
Participant 2: Procurement of raw materials was a challenge because the prices have risen a lot.
Additionally, four participants reported a lack of transport to transfer raw materials, and three participants reported a loss of experienced staff as a critical challenge during this period. In general, the production issues occurred due to financial issues during the COVID-19.

External challenges of women-owned companies during the taliban
The themes related to "T1ET: restriction of women activities" considered the conditions faced when the Taliban took control of the country's governance. It also interlinks with the theme "T2ET: financial crisis" that was added to the challenges of these companies. Also, in this period, these companies faced concerns illustrated in the theme "T3ET: Market downturn" after August.

Theme 1ET: Restriction on women activities
Sixteen participants reported gender discrimination under the Taliban based on what they experienced 20 years ago, which they attributed to their inability to continue their business activities. As one example of this, they cannot even renew their business license under current conditions. Participant 2: Taliban does not let us renew our business license. We should introduce a man as the owner of the company.
Moreover, thirteen participants reported that they are faced with an unclear future, having this uncertainty a key challenge, and for six of the participants, insecurity is a main challenge.
In general, restrictions placed upon women under the Taliban may not be published publicly. However, still, there is some gender discrimination in society, as mentioned in the above comment.

Theme 2ET: Financial crisis
Thirteen participants reported that they could not receive their money from banks due to the financial crisis and nine participants reported the economic downturn as a challenge.
Participant 14: If I want to withdraw money from the bank, I can withdraw only 5% of my total balance per week.
Moreover, five participants reported a lack of financial support after August while they needed financial support to cover their business expenses. Four participants reported the closure of borders as a challenge.

Theme 3ET: Market downturn
Fourteen participants reported that the lack of international relations due to imports and exports was a challenge. In addition, eleven reported that they have also lost their domestic market.
Participant 16: We currently have production but no sales; how long can we continue?
Moreover, eight participants reported that they lost their customers due to the immigration of people from the country. Furthermore, four of them reported that their customers were foreign employees who had left the country. The market issues are raised because of the immigration of their customers and the lack of interest for those who are in the country.

Internal challenges of women-owned companies during the Taliban
Next, we turn to the specific challenges attributed by the interviewees to the impact of Taliban governance. The themes defined under section "T1IT: production expenses" as an internal challenge considered that the companies could not pay the staff salaries and space rent, or even production costs. This was followed by "T2IT: decreased market demand," which was mentioned due to decreased sales and production during the recession. Furthermore, "T3IT: staff mental wellbeing" was named as the next theme and was found to be a major concern for companies.

Theme 1IT: Production expenses
Thirteen participants reported that their businesses lacked the budget to continue their production or could not receive their savings from banks due to the bank crisis. Moreover, six participants reported that although their expenses decreased, they still could not pay the production costs due to an inability to access financial resources to prepare raw materials.
Participant 2: We cannot receive our money from banks; therefore, we are not able to pay the salary of our employees or the space rent.
As shown in the above comment, five participants reported that they could not pay the staff salaries and space rent. In general, all the necessary expenses for production were a challenge for these companies.

Theme 2IT: Decrease in market demand
Twenty-eight participants reported that they faced a decrease in their production volume during the last four months (15 of August to the end of December). This means that they are experiencing a period of disappointment due to the depression in daily production and activities. Fifteen participants reported that their sales were a fraction of what they had previously achieved (e.g., 5%).
Participant 16: We have enough products to supply in the market, but there is no customer. Most people left the country, and others are not rich enough to buy our products.
Six participants reported that their customers had immigrated to another country, and five participants reported a lack of orders for new production. It shows that production issues are directly related to the market's lack of customers and demand.

Theme 3IT: Staff mental wellbeing
Twenty-three participants reported that their staff was not optimistic about their future in Afghanistan. They were faced with some concerns about their economic activities and the situation of this country.
Participant 29: Our staffs are not eager to work as before, because they desire to leave the country.
Additionally, fourteen participants reported that their staffs were interested in immigrating to another country. However, they cannot find a safe way to do so due to the current situation.

Discussion
Afghanistan has a dominant male community anciently. Usually, the culture and social norms stand for women to work the household chores only and for men to work the outdoor economy generating work. Over time, with the development of education and the republic government in 2001, women received encouragement, facilities, and motivation to work in outdoor business activities openly. However, this study determined that women-owned companies have encountered external and internal challenges in sustaining their business with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic (Since March 2020) and the shifting of governance to the Taliban on 15 August 2021.
The major external challenges faced were the movement restriction (T1EC), the recession of the domestic market and restriction to access to international markets (T2EC), and unable to receive financial support from the bank (T3EC) to replenish the economic crisis. Similarly, the production volume was decreased, but the expenses such as staff salaries and space rent left to be paid. Due to insufficient budgets (T1IC) during the COVID-19 pandemic, companies could not pay their employees' wages and retain them. Some participants reported (n = 3) that they lost their experienced staff as they could not pay their salaries. In addition, they could not sell their finished products, and eventually, due to restrictions of movement, they were obligated to close their businesses for the whole period of quarantine (Basij-Rasikh et al., 2020). The financial challenges of the companies were not solved even after the quarantine but instead reached their peak level, and these companies ceased their operations for a limited period (undefined). All these led companies to an onerous financial burden to sustain their business. This was while the financial resources for women-owned companies were limited to some banks in the country, which had difficult conditions for obtaining loans, such as high-interest rates, short repayment periods, and requesting collateral. These conditions were challenging, depriving the women-owned companies of the only source of financing (Research Report on Women Access to Financial Services in Kabul, 2017) in circumstances where sales had decreased due to COVID-19, and these companies needed financial resources more than before to continue their business. Moreover, as some factories prepare their raw materials in villages, they find it challenging to transfer raw materials to factories and use them properly due to the lack of transportation facilities during the pandemic. Financial and production issues were combined challenges for these companies that negatively impacted their growth and improvement. As a result, the presence of these companies in the market was threatened.
Women-owned companies were reported to be more severely affected by COVID-19 than menowned companies globally; even the women-owned companies of developed countries like the USA experienced similar financial losses and hardship to sustain their business (Basij-Rasikh et al., 2020;Braun & Clarke, 2006;Choi et al., 2022; Research Report on Women Access to Financial Services in Kabul, 2017;Torres et al., 2021aTorres et al., , 2021bundefined). It is estimated that women have lost their job by 13 % superior proportion to men globally. US chamber of commerce inference that due to the less investment, poor future planning and estimation among women were the causes of experiencing higher economic burden among women over men (Choi et al., 2022). Actually, the proper planning of the possible future challenges from external and internal threats has to be studied and adopted into the business strategy. However, Afghan women do not have a long history of work experience in business (initiation of women's involvement in outdoor business activities by 2001 AD with the shifting of the Taliban government to the republic government) and have no previous experience of similar pandemic impact in their previous work-life, they were not prepared sufficiently to tackle the financial calamities. Besides, the context of Afghan women is different from other countries. Although women's employment or involvement in income generation makes a significant impact in a family of low-income countries, women are not favored to do so culturally, instead of that gender bias and women violence activities are common in the community of the country, even the many participants did not willing to take participation in this study and withdrew due the fear of the community and new government (Wafeq et al., 2019). According to the World Economic Forum report, the gender gap in social, political, educational, and health matters between women and men is in the worst possible scenario in Afghanistan, the 146 rank in 2022 (Global Gender Gap Report. World Economic Forum, 2022). One of the major challenges for women in any role is patriarchy's deep-rooted practice, which is even more evident in South Asian countries, particularly Afghanistan (Kumar & Singh, 2021). A study in India also showed that 42.86% of women received minimal support from male family members for their work/business during Covid-19. There was a lack of favorable social and culturalreligious norms toward women's involvement in outdoor economic activities, women's restrictive policies of the government, unfavorable support from the Taliban government, the lower financial capacity of women, and the country's economic crisis due to COVID-19 to receive support from the finance companies (Aljazeera, 2022;Basij-Rasikh et al., 2020;Braun & Clarke, 2006;Choi et al., 2022;Esfandiari & Sarwar, 2022;Global Gender Gap Report. World Economic Forum, 2022;Kumar & Singh, 2021;Research Report on Women Access to Financial Services in Kabul, 2017;Torres et al., 2021aTorres et al., , 2021bundefined, ;Wafeq, 2017).
Furthermore, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic as a worldwide challenge accelerated the negative effect on women's lives, particularly in their outdoor activities, including business participation and job continuation. Some studies have reported that COVID causes greater involvement of women in managing family relationships and taking care of the family during the lockdown. For most women, the period of confinement has accentuated the traditional gender roles that have negatively affected the management of their time in their daily activities, such as time dedicated to labor for participation (Croda & Grossbard, 2021). Similarly, confinement in the home has increased the possibility of women violence due to poor economic situation and poverty, which may further cause a psychological affect on women who were already stressed out by the inability to continue their previous occupation. All these factors have harmed women-owned companies.
On the other hand, while these companies were struggling with the challenges of COVID-19, the Taliban came into the government of Afghanistan on 15 August 2021 (undefined). It has further increased the terror and challenge among women. Participants reported that they might face restrictions to continue their business activities (T1ET), even leading to the closure of their companies, under Taliban governance because the Taliban had previously forbidden outdoor women activities during their reign from 1996 to 2001 AD, and some news of closing womenowned companies by Taliban at the Taliban and government war provinces were reported (Amnesty School Speakers Network, 2014;undefined). Moreover, most participants (n = 23) reported that their staff was not eager to work because they were not optimistic about their future in Afghanistan (T3IT). They express a deep sense of uncertainty and insecurity about their futures. Most people wanted to migrate abroad due to the unfavorable situation in the country. This has increased the possibility of citizen migration abroad as expected and has been happening if the companies get closed or receive no support from the government (Sayed et al., 2021). The Taliban governance has a big responsibility to develop a positive image among the citizen toward full access to practice the minimum human right and assurance of safety and support to survive in their own country. As the Taliban have not issued any clear policies or guidelines for womenowned companies yet at the time of the data collection for this study, the government of Afghanistan should undertake the challenges of women determined by this study and develop proper policies and program for women-owned business to overcome the economic crisis of the country due to COVID pandemic and long decades of a civil war of the country with respecting the humanitarian right of women to work independently (undefined, ; World bank, 2020).
Moreover, as the Taliban took over the country (Council on Foreign Relations, 2022;Sayed et al., 2021), the entire international community that worked to facilitate women's economic activities left the country. The World Bank also suspended the payments to Afghanistan (Brangwin, 2021;Human Rights Watch, 2022). This led to a severe financial crisis (T2ET) and as the funding sources in Afghanistan were limited to banks (T3EC), and banks also had strict rules for lending to these companies, such as high interest on loans, lack of tailored produces, and asking collateral as a mandatory role (Of Women-Owned SME Borrowers, 2019), which all together, caused inaccessibility of these companies to financial sources, and this led to increased rates of bankruptcy among these companies (undefined; Women & Business in Afghanistan, 2021). In this situation, the demand for the production of these companies decreased (T2IT), and they were not able to pay the production expenses (T2IT). The inability of women-owned companies to access their savings in the bank and the economic downturn were irreparable blows to many of them.
In general, although the Taliban may still not be perceived as a direct challenge for these companies, the changes in the country, especially economic aspects, caused significant challenges which need to be resolved. Moreover, there is no option for immigration for many women who cannot immigrate to another country safely. These issues will create many other questions for the leaders of these companies as well as further the uncertain status of women generally in this context. Notwithstanding these challenges, the research participants still maintain active companies and express hope in managing these financial and market challenges.
Altogether, these women need to be empowered and supported once again to overcome their challenges. We summarized that proper empowerment from government and non-governmental organizations inside and outside the country would help restore the difficulties faced by the country. We're not sure about receiving cooperation from the new government. Still, we believe if the international organization and government could positively influence the new government, then women could get some freedom and facilitation to re-strengthen themselves by overcoming the challenges they faced with the COVID-19 pandemic. In this regard, first of all, the government (Emirate Islamic) should take a similar legal approach as the other men-owned companies so they can freely run their businesses and work in a secure work environment, as this will eventually develop the country's economic standard.
Moreover, having a good relationship with foreign countries will help these companies expand their market and export their productions without barriers. In addition, these women-led companies that lost their savings due to the economic downturn need financial support to cover their expenses. So, in this regard, international communities trying to empower women need to support these companies financially and technically. Besides, the shift towards Taliban governance meant that the barriers to success rapidly increased (Council on Foreign Relations, 2022). These challenges violate the rights and existence of women in society and the economy.

Limitations
While this is the first study focusing on the challenges of women-owned companies during COVID-19 and Taliban governance, it is not without shortcomings. Firstly, the study included a relative sample size due to the difficulties in accessing women-owned companies. Secondly, the lack of interest in accessible women-owned companies due to women's political and security situation in the country. It caused the limited participation from limited sectors. Third, it was not possible for the companies that closed or suspended their activities after August 2021 (Sieze of Taliban on power) due to the immigration of their owners, lack of communication channels, and lack of interest; therefore, only active companies were included in this study.

Conclusion
COVID-19 and the reinstatement of Taliban rule were two strong shocks to women-owned companies in Afghanistan, which negatively affected their activities and led them to significant challenges. These challenges may cause the closure of these companies or the immigration of businesswomen. These options will be an irrefragable loss for Afghanistan and its two decades' achievement regarding women empowerment before the Taliban. As a result, our findings can help the government and international communities to identify practical measures to protect companies' accomplishments during the current situation.

Funding
Authors received no financial support for conducting this research work.