Walls as Weapons: Afghan Women Protestors’ Wall Writing a a Feminist Tactic Under Gender Apartheid

• In Event: How Repression and Resistance Take PLACE

Abstract

Since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, Afghan women have faced an intensified regime of gender apartheid that criminalizes their public presence and suppresses collective dissent. In response to violent crackdowns on street protests, women in the “Bread, Work, Freedom” movement adopted wall writing as a clandestine yet highly visible feminist tactic. This paper asks: How does wall writing—historically a practice associated with men—become a feminist tactic of resistance under authoritarian repression? Why and how has it emerged as a preferred tactic? What political work does it perform? And how do women navigate its risks?
Drawing on 33 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Afghan women protestors inside Afghanistan and in exile, I examine the emergence, meanings, and political significance of wall writing within the movement’s broader repertoire of contention. Guided by Taylor and Van Dyke’s (2004) concept of tactical repertoires and informed by Feminist Standpoint Theory, I show how women strategically repurposed wall writing to sustain resistance when both protest and women’s visibility in public space were criminalized.
I argue that wall writing functions as a feminist tactic in at least four ways: it builds collective identity and invites participation; directly contests the Taliban’s gendered authority; enables transnational diffusion of protest messages and solidarity through digital circulation; and relies on gendered risk management shaped by surveillance, mobility restrictions, and family power dynamics. By theorizing Afghan women’s wall writing under gender apartheid, this paper extends scholarship on feminist resistance and social movement tactical repertoires under a gender apartheid regime, while foregrounding Afghan women as political agents and producers of feminist knowledge rather than passive victims.

Author

• Selay Ghaffar, University of Toronto