Attachments
Ability to operate:
· Organizations continue to report that they are able to operate with women and men: 28% of respondents are fully operating with women and men and 43% are partially operating with women and men. 16% report being operating are either fully or partially operating with only men. 6% are still not operating. 7% or either fully or partially operating with only women.
· New impediments faced by organizations included new instructions from the DfA for bank accounts and Tax Identification Numbers for women employees (41%).
The impossibility to register new projects involving Afghan women staff was mentioned by 34% of respondents. 31% also mentioned requests to replace women in leadership and boards with men. A range of other impediments were also mentioned such as the non-acceptance of documents signed by Afghan women or projects mentioning women beneficiaries, revocation of local agreements and instructions to stop paying women staff.
Modalities of operations
· 42% of respondents noted that women staff were working from home. 33% said women were working from home with only men coming to the office. 29% mentioned that women staff were able to go to the field only (without being able to go to the office).
· Overall, a total of 24% of women are working from home across the 144 organizations.
This was also the case for 4% of men. This is a slight increase in the number of women working from home compared to the previous round, however this increase could also be linked to the fact that there was a bigger proportion of women led organizations in the seventh round, who are less likely to be able to negotiate exemptions and operate.
· 52% of organizations said they had to let women staff go. 36% of these organizations mentioned it was women staff who made the decision to leave due to DfA decrees. 32% said they closed activities or lost funding and had to let staff of both genders go. 9% said they lost funding and let only women staff go. 8% said they replaced Afghan women staff with Afghan men staff as women staff could no longer work.
· The biggest impact of the ban continues to be on staff’s ability to interact with each other.