A piece I worked on recently from Afghanistan highlights both the opportunities and the challenges facing women entrepreneurs in post-conflict reconstruction. The US military has, for the first time, set aside more than $350 million over five years in contracts for Afghan businesswomen to produce tees, socks and outdoor gear for the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police. As the American military sees it, the initiative is part counter-insurgency and part economic development.

Says Air Force Maj. Charles Seidel, who is overseeing the program: "Fifty percent of the country are women.  If we are going to make a difference, we have got to create jobs, we have to give hope. How better to do that?’’

On the opportunity side: Women are eager for the business and hungry to win the military contract.  For the past eight years Afghan women have ventured into entrepreneurship and created start-ups in fields ranging from tailoring to trucking.  Their profits have gone to educate their children and support their families, and along the way they have helped to reshape their roles among their relatives. 

On the challenges side: Few Afghan businesswomen have the manufacturing capacity and quality control experience required to win so large and so demanding an order.  And even fewer can understand the American Request for Proposal (RFP) process whose arcane intricacies  are often unintelligible even to native English speakers.  While women may be succeeding in small business, large-scale factory production presents a formidable challenge.

The test of the program will come next month when the RFPs are turned in. In the meantime, Afghan businesswomen are working hard to fill out their proposals and assemble their plans to produce en masse -- if only they can get the Americans to give them a chance.

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