This article presents an original dataset collected in predominantly rural, Eastern Afghanistan, which finds that girls’ access to education and women’s professional and economic opportunities are key to understanding the experience of peace. In other words, many Afghan men and women in the areas studied not only want to see girls go to school and women sell goods at the market or treat patients in the hospital, but believe this to be fundamental to their understanding of peace in their communities. We seek to investigate this relationship, arguing that much of the donor-assisted programming in Afghanistan is based on a flawed and fragmentary understanding of gendered power relations and priorities, to the detriment of the goals of both peace and women’s rights.