Furious that she defied his orders against attending the protest, he repeatedly hit her “like a ball on the ground,” she said. Ms. Amiri’s younger sister, who witnessed the violence, confirmed her account. Her father couldn’t be reached for comment.

“Nothing scares me more than my father. Not even the Taliban,” said Ms. Amiri, who worked at the ministry of interior and like almost all Afghan female government employees lost her job after the Taliban takeover on Aug. 15. “I am standing against the Taliban because of what I went through with my father,” she said…

Hila, 25, is one of the few Afghan women still employed, working at one of the foreign embassies that remained in Kabul after the Taliban takeover. She says she has financially supported her parents and younger siblings for years. Even so, her younger brother, who is unemployed, welcomed the Taliban’s policy on women.

“He says: ‘What the Taliban say is good for women. It is good for girls because it’s based on Islamic rules and we should obey that.’ But I don’t think these are Islamic rules,” Hila said. “The men who are like my brother, they are happy that the Taliban are back. They think the power is now in their hands.”