The need to save the women of Afghanistan has for years been the focus of multiple
international organisations, and through humanitarian aid the world has attempted to achieve
this goal. This paper aims to gain an understanding of what it actually has been like to live, as
a woman, in Afghanistan during the years of increased humanitarian aid, after the fall of the
Taliban regime in 2001. To achieve this, the paper is based on the feminist institutionalist
theory combined with previous research. This paper will focus on gaining an understanding
of the informal institutions surrounding gender, and also look at empirical data to assess the
practical implementation of gender-equality on the ground. To understand if or how the
gender-equality has changed in Afghanistan this paper uses both quantitative and qualitative
data. The conclusion will show that, even though there is a difficulty in obtaining data from
Afghanistan, there has been a positive development for gender-equality on the ground and
that there, however, has been little to no change towards gender-equality within gender norms
and informal rules.