Crypto may help Afgan women to resist the oppression

The drama that is unfolding in Afganistan will impact the majority of its population, however its women and girls will suffer the most.

The Taliban dictatorship will deprive them of that ounce of independence they could gain during the last 20 years and condemn to invisibility and total submission. How can one resist such viciousness? The answer, as incomplete as it is, may lie within technology, and the Afgan activist and crypto enthusiast Roya Mahboob have some ideas on it.

Starting as a female CEO of a software firm in Afghanistan, she definitely knows the struggles, and Bitcoin was one of the tools she used to overcome them, notably for payments. She also used crypto to improve the lives of many Afgan women through her different ventures. One of her companies, Women’s Annex, encouraged Afgan women to write blogs, payable in crypto (99% of female writers didn’t have a bank account). Another, Digital Citizen Fund, is teaching girls about blockchain technology, coding, and financial literacy. The fund famously sponsored the Afgan Girls Robotic team, which won a silver medal in a US robotics competition in 2017 and a gold medal in Estonia for a solar-powered farmer robot.

Now the situation is going to become more complicated though, with Talibans preaching nothing less than a female slavery. Having an independent (and not conspicuous) income source can be life-changing (and life-saving) for many oppressed women, and crypto can be used both as a tool to earn money, and as a payment system.

We do hope that Afgan women pull through these difficult times.