UNIFEM working to empower female farmers

Khosiyat Abdurakhmanova, who lives in the Vosei district in the southern Tajik province of Khatlon, about 280 km east of the capital, Dushanbe, is a midwife by profession. But she was forced into farming after her two sons were killed and she had to become the family breadwinner. She now farms wheat, water melons and cotton on five hectares. She also has a five-hectare fish farm. Life is hard, with access to credit one of the biggest problems. Although cheap loans to farmers are supposed to be a legal right for Tajik farmers, people like Khosiyat are often the victims of loan sharks. "I cannot accept such [a high rate of] interest," Khosiyat said. "It is very disadvantageous to me. If I were given a normal favourable loan, it would be possible to repair my sons' tractor and to transport cotton. It would be possible to buy an old machine for the needs of our farm and breed a hundred geese as well." Khosiyat is one of a tiny band of female farmers. According to the Tajik Statistics Committee, only 6 percent of farms nationwide are run by women, although that is more than double the figure five years ago. Historically, women have been discriminated against in the agricultural sector. In Soviet times, men managed the collective farms while women, and often children, were assigned to work in the fields. These stereotypes of the division of rural labour remain strong. According to the Statistics Committee, in 2002 half of those involved in the agricultural sector were female but only 15 percent of managers and specialists were women. Women say that in 1996, when collective and state farms were broken up into private ventures, they were overlooked, with no support given in terms of credit and know-how to get them heading their own farms. The need to economically empower Tajik rural women has never been greater, according to the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). In a 2002 report, the UN agency said that in rural areas, particularly those devastated by the 1991-93 civil war, the number of female-headed households had increased, in some regions making up 40 percent of total households. Female-headed homes tend to be among the poorest in a nation where 83 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line, according to World Bank figures. Furthermore, female-headed households tend to have inferior access to land, the report said, adding that 33 percent of households reported absent husbands due to labour migration or widowhood as a result of the civil war. One of the key issues is a lack of awareness. "The problem is that rural women are not even aware of available information. They often do not know their rights and cannot stand up for themselves," Viloyat Mirzoeva, a project manager for UNIFEM, told IRIN. In an effort to address the issue, UNIFEM is working on a project called "Land Reform in the Republic of Tajikistan and Provision of Economic Safety for Rural Women". A coordination council has been established to support the UNIFEM project, headed by the Tajik deputy prime minister, Kozidavlat Koimdodov. An agreement has been signed between UNIFEM and the Women and Family Affairs Commission under which information and counselling centres will be established in 11 districts of Sogd and Khatlon provinces and in some other regions. The centres will offer free legal counselling on land, loans and farming and should help the fledgling Tajik female farming sector to grow.