Akari Ohara
Bronze Member
Lately I’ve been reading a lot about Afghanistan. Not out of idle curiosity, but because every time I come across another article about women there, something in me aches.
According to reports from the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, women in Afghanistan have been almost entirely erased from public life. Girls can’t go to school past sixth grade. Women have been banned from universities since late 2022, banned from studying medicine since 2024, even barred from entering UN premises since last year. Today, only around a quarter of working-age women are employed or looking for work, compared to nearly 90% of men. In many places, women can’t leave the house without a male relative accompanying them. One woman, after losing her job overnight, told international media it felt like she no longer existed.
I don’t live there. I haven’t gone through that. But reading those words, I find myself asking: if one day the right to work, the right to decide my own life, were taken away simply because I’m a woman — how would I even keep going?
I’m writing this as someone who works at Langtrees. My job isn’t something everyone approves of, and I know some people look at it with judgment. But there’s one thing I’ve never felt like I was missing: the right to choose. I chose this work. I set my own hours. I earn my own money, build my own life, set my own goals. No one requires my permission from a man to walk out my own front door. No one stops me from studying if I want to. These are things so small that most people never think twice about them, yet for millions of Afghan women today, they’re luxuries.
The more I think about it, the more grateful I feel. Grateful to live somewhere that women, no matter what work they do, are still protected under the law, still have a voice, still get to choose their own path without trading away their safety or freedom of movement for it. Grateful that Langtrees is a place where I get to work with dignity, judged on my ability rather than reduced to a label. Not every woman in this world gets that.
But injustice toward women isn’t limited to Afghanistan. In plenty of other places, even in freer societies, women working in the sex industry, like me, are still often looked at differently, seen as worth less, stripped of some baseline respect, even though the work is a personal, legal choice. I think that’s its own kind of injustice, just on a different scale. Whether a woman isn’t treated fairly because of the work she does, or worse, isn’t even allowed to choose what work she does at all. underneath it, the same thing is happening: a woman’s right to decide for herself is being treated as less important.
I don’t have answers for the bigger questions politics, war, any of it. I’m just an ordinary woman trying to live my life well. But I believe that if every woman were free, free to study, free to work, free to choose how she earns her living, the world would be a much fairer place.
Writing this down is mostly a reminder to myself not to take what I have for granted. And if I could wish for anything, it would be that one day, every woman, anywhere in the world, gets to live by her own choices.
According to reports from the United Nations and Human Rights Watch, since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, women in Afghanistan have been almost entirely erased from public life. Girls can’t go to school past sixth grade. Women have been banned from universities since late 2022, banned from studying medicine since 2024, even barred from entering UN premises since last year. Today, only around a quarter of working-age women are employed or looking for work, compared to nearly 90% of men. In many places, women can’t leave the house without a male relative accompanying them. One woman, after losing her job overnight, told international media it felt like she no longer existed.
I don’t live there. I haven’t gone through that. But reading those words, I find myself asking: if one day the right to work, the right to decide my own life, were taken away simply because I’m a woman — how would I even keep going?
I’m writing this as someone who works at Langtrees. My job isn’t something everyone approves of, and I know some people look at it with judgment. But there’s one thing I’ve never felt like I was missing: the right to choose. I chose this work. I set my own hours. I earn my own money, build my own life, set my own goals. No one requires my permission from a man to walk out my own front door. No one stops me from studying if I want to. These are things so small that most people never think twice about them, yet for millions of Afghan women today, they’re luxuries.
The more I think about it, the more grateful I feel. Grateful to live somewhere that women, no matter what work they do, are still protected under the law, still have a voice, still get to choose their own path without trading away their safety or freedom of movement for it. Grateful that Langtrees is a place where I get to work with dignity, judged on my ability rather than reduced to a label. Not every woman in this world gets that.
But injustice toward women isn’t limited to Afghanistan. In plenty of other places, even in freer societies, women working in the sex industry, like me, are still often looked at differently, seen as worth less, stripped of some baseline respect, even though the work is a personal, legal choice. I think that’s its own kind of injustice, just on a different scale. Whether a woman isn’t treated fairly because of the work she does, or worse, isn’t even allowed to choose what work she does at all. underneath it, the same thing is happening: a woman’s right to decide for herself is being treated as less important.
I don’t have answers for the bigger questions politics, war, any of it. I’m just an ordinary woman trying to live my life well. But I believe that if every woman were free, free to study, free to work, free to choose how she earns her living, the world would be a much fairer place.
Writing this down is mostly a reminder to myself not to take what I have for granted. And if I could wish for anything, it would be that one day, every woman, anywhere in the world, gets to live by her own choices.
