It may look like they're just planting and weeding, but for the women tending the public gardens of Jalalabad, the tasks represent far more: the rare chance to work outside the home in one of Afghanistan's most conservative and unstable provinces.

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The first women settled on this stony slope outside Kabul in the 1990s hoping to escape the stigma those like them are forced to endure. Today it is known as Afghanistan's 'hill of widows', home to a cluster of women who have eked out independence in a society that shuns and condemns them as immoral.