In Afghanistan’s Zabul province, survival has narrowed into a single, exhausting option for many women: spinning wool. As jobs disappeared and prices climbed, this slow, physically demanding labor became one of the few remaining ways to earn money. For older women, widows, and those living with illness, wool spinning is not a tradition or a craft chosen. It is what remains when other paths close. 

Qamar Gul, 70, described wool spinning as her only means of staying alive. Living with multiple health issues and receiving no outside assistance, she works simply to secure food. “I spin wool to survive. This is how I earn a piece of bread,” she said. Her words carry the weight of a life reduced to necessity. Each day of work is shaped by pain and fatigue, yet stopping is not an option when hunger waits. 

Other women in Zabul share the same reality. Spinning one kilogram of yarn takes two to three days of steady labor and earns about 50 afghanis, an amount that rarely stretches beyond the most basic needs. Arifa, another resident, spoke of watching winter arrive while her children went without warm clothes. The work consumes time and energy, yet the return never feels enough. “Our life is extremely difficult,” she said, a statement echoed across many households in the province. 

The labor itself is relentless. Women sit for hours, twisting wool by hand, their fingers stiff from cold, their backs aching from long days bent forward. The income often falls short of covering flour, cooking fuel, or medicine. Zargona described a life where even healthcare feels out of reach. “What can we do with 50 afghanis?” she asked. “Clinics are closed to us, we have no flour, nothing to eat.” Her words reflect not just poverty, but the steady erosion of options. 

As economic conditions worsened, local sources say more women turned to wool spinning, not because it offers stability, but because it is one of the few forms of work still accessible to them. Many households now depend on this informal labor alongside irregular aid, waiting for help that arrives sporadically, if at all. The uncertainty weighs heavily, especially on those already carrying the responsibilities of caregiving and survival. 

These stories are not about endurance as a virtue or a slogan. They are about women working through illness, age, and exhaustion because there is no alternative. They are about mothers counting days in kilograms of yarn, and older women measuring life in pieces of bread. Wool spinning keeps families afloat, but it also reveals how fragile daily survival has become, and how much of it rests quietly in the hands of women whose labor is rarely seen.