After the Second World War, however, the government saw a need to reform Afghan society, and women's emancipation was a part of that policy.
Queen Humaira Begum acted as its first Honorary president and official patron,[3] while the acting president was Zaynab Inayat Siraj or Zeynab Enayet Saraj, cousin of king Amanullah Khan,[2] who had lived in exile in Iran and thus had experience of the ongoing modernization of that country under the Shah.
[2] The WWA supported the voluntary abolition of the veil, which was realized in August 1959, on the second day of the festival of Jeshyn, when Queen Humaira and Princess Bilqis appeared in the royal box at the military parade unveiled, alongside the Prime Minister's wife, Zamina Begum.
[5] The sewing classes, which was attended by Afghan upper-class women who had until then lived in purdah, was followed by a fashion show at the United States Information Center auditorium,[5] and after this, the upper-class women of Kabul started to wear Western fashion in the streets of Kabul.
It was a part of policy to attract foreign financial aid by presenting a modern image of Afghanistan to the world, and the WWA, consisting as it did of educated and often professional urban elite women, provided an image of modernity and progress to the outside world.
[2] The Polish reporter Andrzej Binkowski, who visited Kabul in the 1950s, did note the great contrast between the WWA president, who were a modern woman in Western fashion, and the majority of women in Kabul, who in the 1950s still lived in purdah, only left the house dressed in burka and never spoke to a nonrelated male except through a door.