‘A source of hope’: Afghanistan’s female journalists challenging sexism and the Taliban

Zahra Joya started Rukhshana Media so Afghan women could tell their stories in their own words. Now she is battling to keep it going as long as she can

Despite years of development, investment and progress in the Afghan media industry, 28-year-old Zahra Joya often found she was the only woman in a newsroom. It was a lonely space, dominated by men who made the decisions about which stories were important, and which were not," she says.

Joya, who is from the persecuted Hazara community, felt she faced discrimination because of her ethnicity and sex. There were so few women journalists in Kabul," she says. There would hardly be women reporters covering political events or press conferences even though these stories affect us greatly."