Women’s status bleaker than ever

The status of rural women in Tajikistan, strongly rooted in tradition, remains bleaker than ever in this mountainous Central Asian country. Despite their key position in the family, a UN official argues that rural women suffer from extremely low status in society, a condition exacerbated by the pressures of acute poverty and traditional male perceptions of female roles. In the worst cases, women are treated as little more than “bonded labour”, the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) coordinator, Nouchine Yavari-D’Hellencourt, told IRIN. “In Khatlon District [southern Tajikistan], you will often see 50 women working in the fields, with one male supervisor sitting under a tree sipping tea,” she said. Planned land reforms are unlikely to improve a female field labourer’s position. These reforms will allow land to be leased to the head of existing cooperatives or farming collectives, which are then able to distribute parcels of land to rural teams, or manage the farm as a collective. However, as men were traditionally always in charge, the reforms would reinforce the lowly female role, she said. This does not matter so much in the smaller farming cooperatives, where the redistribution of resources is more transparent. However, women on the larger and more impersonal collective farms will continue to be treated as bonded labour. “Women are not paid on these larger farms. I have visited collectives where women receive only a few bags of flour for six months’ work,” Yavari-D’Hellencourt said. Another factor stemming from acute hardship has been the rise in single parent families. “There are enormous numbers of women alone, without revenue or husbands, taking care of children themselves,” she said. The phenomenon has resulted from husbands leaving home in search of work, initially on a seasonal basis. Although accurate statistics are unavailable, Yavari-D’Hellencourt maintains that often men do not return, or choose to remarry while abroad, usually in Russia. As most religious marriages in rural areas are not officially registered, to avoid a US $5 charge, abandoned or second wives have no legal status. This means that husbands are not legally bound to provide for their families. Traditional Tajik male attitudes have also been identified as a barrier to improving conditions for women in rural areas, affecting their ability to access reproductive health care among other things. But efforts are being made to address this. In recent years, UNIFEM has run over 200 seminars nationwide addressing the role of women in Tajik society, with an emphasis on violence against women. Men are encouraged to participate, although numbers are strictly limited to no more than a third of the group, otherwise younger Tajik women become too self-conscious. A recent assessment by an independent consultant indicates that the seminars have left an impact. “The series of seminars have made women rethink their relationships with members of the family. Many reported a change in relationship with their sons, whom they wanted to ensure grew up with different attitudes to women than their fathers,” she said. Official efforts may also help to improve the status of women in Tajikistan’s more isolated communities. Following a presidential decree to include women in local government, 70 percent of local assistants are women, and there is at least one woman on the management board of most rural district offices, often in charge of social affairs. “It sounds surprising, but women are actually becoming well integrated into local government in rural areas,” said Yavari-D’Hellencourt.