ABSTRACT
Afghan women are among those women whose "portraits" have been used most often in the contemporary era to symbolize victimhood, helplessness, migration, pain, sorrow, and even justification to wage wars. This chapter challenges the reductionist portrayals of the Afghan women as passive victims in the post-2001 context of Afghanistan by highlighting women's political participation and their agency in their everyday practices of governance within their local communities and at the national level. It explores the Afghan women's situation within the context of globalization and the way development and social change have evolved as a result of post-2001 liberal intervention in Afghanistan, resulting from the "War on Terror". The chapter provides an analysis on the extensive field research on women's empowerment projects. There is a significant gap in the study of the gendered and gendering nature of state-building and governance in the context of conflict-affected settings.
