J.12_USAID_Tajikistan_Feed_the_Future_Gender_Analysis_FINAL_Oct_14 _2013_(2).docx

Gender Analysis for Feed the Future Project Activity Document: Tajikistan 2013 This mandatory gender analysis was conducted in August and September 2013 in preparation for USAID Tajikistan’s Feed the Future PAD. The gender team conducting the analysis spent two weeks in Tajikistan and conducted 29 interviews with nearly 100 people. Key recommendations include addressing gender gaps in the following four ways: 1) focus on both men and women, recognizing that constraints exist for both male and female farmers (including the needs to migrate due to lack of jobs with earning potential; 2) reduce the confidence gap by developing activities that address women’s low confidence at all levels of household, farm, community and government; 3) reduce the rights gap through policy and other changes that broaden awareness of land tenure and marriage rights; and 4) reduce the resources gap to ensure that both women and men farmers have access to extension services, credit and agricultural inputs.

Authors:

Dr. Jeannie Harvey, Gender Advisor, Bureau for Food Security, USAID/Washington Mr. Firuz Ibragimov, MSc. Dushanbe-based Agriculture Consultant Ms. Navura Jalilova, MA, Dushanbe-based Gender and Nutrition Consultant Dr. Kai Spratt, Senior Gender Technical Specialist, Asia and Middle East Bureaus, USAID/Washington

October 14, 2013

Table of Contents

__USG F Gender Indicators __Feed the Future sex-disaggregated or women-specific indicators

ACRONYMS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

USAID Tajikistan requested assistance to conduct a mandatory gender analysis for its Feed the Future (FTF) Project Activity Document (PAD) focused in 12 districts in the Khatlon Province, the FTF zone of influence (ZOI). The Gender Analysis was conducted in August and September 2013 with Gender Specialists from USAID/Washington and local Tajik consultants.

Pervasive and persistent structural inequalities in Tajikistan limit the ability of the poor to improve their lives. Women and girls are affected by inequalities through two main channels. One is composed of limits on their access to education and employment opportunities, which curtails their economic autonomy and weakens their bargaining position within the family. The other way inequalities affect women is through discrimination they face that leads to their material and resource deprivation, making it more difficult for them to fulfill their vital roles in food production, preparation, processing, distribution, and marketing activities. Challenging the constraints women face must therefore be treated as a key component in the fight against poverty and hunger – key outcomes for FTF.

Through a series of site visits and interviews over two weeks the Gender Analysis team was able to compile observations, comments, and key recommendations. Common themes arose across a diverse set of informants, which allowed the team to identify specific gender-related gaps that could be addressed in the development and design of the Tajikistan Country Office’s FTF PAD. Findings of the gender analysis are reported in several ways: through five domains of gender analysis (from ADS 205), by looking at what Implementing Partners are currently doing, and by proposing several specific approaches to reduce gender-related gaps that should be addressed in the new PAD. A brief discussion of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) results is included as these results should help guide ways USAID can request Implementing Partners to improve Tajik women’s overall empowerment. The Feed the Future learning agenda questions are included to illustrate key hypotheses that should be addressed in the FTF Tajikistan strategy. And, the role of AOR/CORs throughout the project cycle is described.

Key recommendations of the gender analysis include addressing gender gaps in the following ways: 1) focus on males and females; 2) reduce the confidence gap; 3) reduce the rights gap; and 4) reduce the resources gap. For each of these recommendations we list the specific ways each gap limits women and men, possible activities that could reduce or shift the gap, and indicators that, if used, would aid in documenting a reduction in these gender-related gaps.

Overall, the Gender Analysis team suggests that the many policy, resource and power related inequalities explored during the interviews be addressed concurrently and continuously along with improved agricultural methods and increased access to inputs to truly transform Tajikistan’s agricultural sector within USAID’s FTF zone of influence. The Gender Analysis team believes that with improvements in resource and power inequalities along with a focus on nutrition awareness, a corresponding improvement in nutrition outcomes will also result.

BACKGROUND

Promoting gender equality and advancing the status of all women and girls around the world is vital to achieving U.S. foreign policy and development objectives. Gender analysis has been required in USAID since 2012 for both strategy and project development. At the project level, a gender analysis should identify the:

At this level, findings from the gender analysis should influence the project design to ensure that it explicitly addresses any disparities and includes actions to reduce specific inequalities. Results from the gender analysis may also lead a Mission or Country Office to build in project components that specifically focus on empowering women and girls, if the analysis suggests that this is important for achieving the Project Purpose and related results. Development Objective (DO) and Intermediate Result (IR) narratives are required to identify the specific gender gap/s relevant to that DO/IR and a discussion of how closing those gaps will be achieved. In addition, the monitoring and evaluation framework should include indicators that track progress in closing the gender gap/s or achieving a female empowerment objective.[footnoteRef:1] [1: ADS Chapter 205. Integrating Gender Equality and Female Empowerment in USAID’s Program Cycle. July 17, 2013, p 10-11.]

The Feed the Future (FTF) Tajikistan project is a cornerstone of USAID’s Central Asia Regional Development Cooperation Strategy (RDCS) Development Objective 2: Expanded Diverse and Competitive Trade and Markets. The Tajikistan Country Office (TCO) FTF project will contribute to IR2: Resilient Income and Agriculture Resources[footnoteRef:2]. The TCO requested assistance to conduct the mandatory gender analysis for its Project Activity Document (PAD) through which TCO will design its new FTF projects, focused in 12 districts in the Khatlon Province, the zone of influence (ZOI). [2: Note that recent changes in the results framework may not be reflected. This section may be revised to reflect these changes. ]

The Gender Analysis team comprised four individuals who participated in meetings, field visits and the writing of this report. The team included:

· Dr. Jeannie Harvey. Gender Advisor, Bureau for Food Security, USAID/Washington

· Mr. Firuz Ibragimov, MSc. Dushanbe-based Agriculture Consultant

· Ms. Navruza Jalilova, MA, Dushanbe-based Gender and Nutrition Consultant

· Dr. Kai Spratt, Senior Gender Technical Specialist, Asia and Middle East Bureaus, USAID/Washington

The team was tasked with:

· Identifying the extent to which current USAID activities are increasing women farmers’ empowerment and effectively reaching women and children to improve nutritional outcomes; and

· Providing recommendations for how USAID Tajikistan’s agricultural and nutrition programs can adapt or change to better promote gender equality, female empowerment and address gender-based violence.

METHODOLOGY

Prior to commencing work in Dushanbe, the team conducted a desk review of relevant USAID program and activity documents provided by the TCO, from the Bureau for Food Security (BFS) in Washington, and research and reports conducted or funded by other researchers or donors. The team met as a group for the first time on August 26, 2013 and collectively attended all meetings and site visits, except for those related to training for TCO staff.

Table 1. Interviews Conducted for TCO FTF Gender Analysis

FINDINGS

Pervasive and persistent structural inequalities in Tajikistan limit the ability of the poor to improve their lives. Low incomes among civil sector employees encourage corruption and rent-seeking; limited financing options and an environment in which doing business is fraught with difficulties discourages innovation, risk-taking, and investments that create work. Women and girls in Tajikistan, as with females worldwide, face additional inequities and constraints to full participation in their communities - justified by social norms and practices related to evolving concepts of Tajik nationalism and the often conflicting redefinition of appropriate gender norms influenced by globalization and emerging religious orthodoxy[footnoteRef:3]. [3: What women and girls are ‘allowed’ to do also varies based on rural/urban, ethnic, and class differences within Tajikistan, as well as the woman’s age with older women having more freedom.]

While the laws and policies governing access to and ownership of land are purportedly “gender neutral” in Tajikistan, the ineffective and biased implementation of these laws and policies reproduce inequitable and exclusionary outcomes, perpetuating inequalities. Formally, women and men are viewed equally by the new land code and the Dekhan Farm law (this law would allow share holders to withdraw land shares from large farms, that were formally collective farms and are still managed as one unit), but women’s awareness or knowledge of their legal rights, the new laws and related registration procedures remains very low, with the result that the potential benefits of the new legal provisions fail to reach them. Without effective implementation of laws and policies – and reliable rewards or consequences for doing so - customary rules and practices reinforce male privilege in leadership and decision-making roles and restrict women’s access to key resources such as land ownership and credit. Despite the laws being non-discriminatory, rural customs and traditional cultural practices hamper their implementation. These inequalities will continue to perpetuate negative development outcomes in Tajikistan – affecting intergenerational household food security and nutrition.

Women and girls are affected by these inequalities through two main channels. One is composed of limits on their access to education and employment opportunities, which curtails their economic autonomy and weakens their bargaining position within the family. This is especially true for younger women within the household, who earn authority through childbearing, especially of sons and having a good reputation, an authority that grows with age. Younger women’s weakened bargaining position translates into little or no voice in household or farming decisions, differential feeding patterns and caregiving practices favoring boys and men, food and nutrition insecurity, and lower health and nutrition outcomes. The second channel of inequalities is the actual discrimination women face that leads to their material deprivation, making it more difficult for them to fulfill their vital roles in food production, preparation, processing, distribution, and marketing activities. Challenging the constraints women face must therefore be treated as a key component in the fight against poverty and malnutrition – key outcomes for FTF. One example is when Village Councils exclude leaders on the basis that they must have formal higher education. Yet, due to women’s lower rates of higher education completion, this criteria results in excluding many women. Yet, although education is seen as a formal criteria, one informant told us that it was a “practice” not really a requirement.

“Criteria of Village Councils that leaders have formal education is not really a requirement, rather it’s a practice.”

Key Informant interview

Men as well are affected by gender inequalities. High levels of unemployment, poor quality of education and policy barriers that limit entrepreneurship that could create jobs reduce opportunities for decent work, rendering many men unable to fulfill their primary role as “breadwinner” and “head of household”. Failure to fulfill this role in Tajikistan contributes to massive labor migration (80% of the estimated two million migrants from Tajikistan are men) to Russia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and, to a lesser extent, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia[footnoteRef:4] in order to find work. Accurate data on the number of men who experience labor trafficking or forced labor and the conditions under which they live and work as migrants is not available but the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that the prevalence of forced labor (4.2 victims per thousand inhabitants) is highest for Central and South Eastern Europe (non-EU) and Community of Independent States and these data may be similar for Central Asia Republics as well.[footnoteRef:5] [footnoteRef:6] Labor trafficking is significant enough that ILO opened the first shelter in Tajikistan for male victims of trafficking from throughout the Central Asia region after a survey it conducted in 2010 with the Regional Center for Migration and Refugee Issues revealed that nearly 69 percent of trafficking victims in Central Asia were male and that over 90 percent of trafficking cases involved labor exploitation.[footnoteRef:7] It should be noted that increasing numbers of Tajik women are also migrating abroad for work. [4: In 2013 the US Department of State upgraded Tajikistan as a Tier 2 country for trafficking because although “the Government of Tajikistan does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking… it is making significant efforts to do so”. http://www.ecoi.net/local_link/250977/361946_en.html.] [5: ILO defines forced labor as ‘situations in which the persons involved – women and men, girls and boys – are made to work against their free will, coerced by their recruiter or employer, for example through violence or threats of violence, or by more subtle means such as accumulated debt, retention of identity papers or threats of denunciation to immigration authorities….exacting forced labour is a crime, and should be punishable through penalties which reflect the gravity of the offence. Most countries outlaw forced labour, human trafficking and slavery-like practices in their national legislation, but successful prosecutions of offenders sadly remain few and far between. ILO 2012 Global estimate of forced labour. Geneva – Switzerland. www.ilo.org/forcedlabour.] [6: USG defines trafficking in persons (TIP) as “an international crime involving the acquisition of a human being through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of exploiting the individual for profit through forced labor or prostitution. Far from being a “soft issue,” trafficking—a modern day form of slavery—constitutes a violation of human rights in which victims are deprived of their fundamental freedoms. TIP can involve either sex or labor exploitation, or both.” USAID Countering Trafficking in Persons Policy 2012, p 1.] [7: Press release. - Bermet Moldobaeva, Program Officer in Central Asia, International Organization for Migration, July 25, 2011.]

Men’s roles are strictly constrained as well. A “culture of shame” that defines and reinforces masculine identity and limits men and boys - at least publically - from engaging in anything associated with “women’s work”, such as childcare, domestic labor, some agricultural tasks, and community activities related to ‘women and children’s welfare’. [footnoteRef:8] Masculinity norms require men to be in control and deserving of respect and authority regardless of the extent to which they actually contribute to the family. Men are promoted as the family decision-makers, although within the household decision-making may be shared, and in public arenas men can rarely be challenged in this role. [8: For example, community based organizations that work on social, health and education activities are dominated by women, as these are seen as women’s not men’s concerns.]

Through a series of site visits and interviews over two weeks the Gender Analysis team was able to compile the following observations and comments. The interviews, for the most part, explored the “domains of gender analysis” that is, the constructs within which gender is enacted and reinforced. There are different gender analysis frameworks and there is no one framework that has been adopted as the standard USAID approach. Nevertheless, most gender analysis frameworks involve collecting quantitative and qualitative information in the following areas (see Annex I for details of each domain):

· Laws, Policies, Regulations, and Institutional Practices

· Cultural Norms and Beliefs

· Gender Roles, Responsibilities, and Time Use

· Access to and Control over Assets and Resources

· Patterns of Power and Decision-making

Quantitative data have been collected by other sources[footnoteRef:9] and during the field visits the team focused on collecting qualitative data. By structuring questions around the five gender domains, common themes began to emerge that were then explored during consecutive key informant interviews to understand the extent of, at least among our limited sample size, the commonalities among different informants’ perspectives and norms. While quantitative data can document the percentage of women in Water Users’ Associations (WUA), the extent to which women decided on what crops to cultivate, the low level of women’s awareness of appropriate agricultural techniques or nutritional benefits of growing certain crops, quantitative data cannot explain why there are so few women in WUAs or why men insist on having only their names on legal documents. By exploring assertions that “women don’t have time for leadership roles” qualitative data helped us explore what it might take to create an enabling environment not only for the emergence of female leaders but also for male advocates for female empowerment and improved agricultural capacity and food security. [9: See USAID Family Farming Program Tajikistan: Assessing the role of women in rural areas of Tajikistan. August 2013 and Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, findings for Tajikistan, Tatiana Pulido, USAID, personal communication, September 2013. ]

By identifying some of the underlying customary practices and often unchallenged explanations perpetuating gaps between males and females, the TCO FTF team will be better able to design activities that reduce specific gaps and contribute to a more equitable environment for men and women in its ZOI.

Strengths and Limitations of the Gender Analysis

The strengths of the gender analysis include the experience of the gender advisors on the team and the local consultants’ expertise in Tajik agriculture policy, the agricultural and health/social sectors, local customs and temporal and historic changes that have occurred over the last 20 years which continue to influence the social and political context within which FTF operates. One of the consultants was a man, which enabled him to have separate meetings with male community members and delve more deeply into issues from men’s perspectives. The team was able to set up a number of interviews independently, usually to interview local NGOs mentioned by other informants who were working on gender equality issues.

The limitations of the analysis include: not all team members spoke Tajik or Russian and translations may have been incomplete or inaccurate; the team did not have control over the selection of community members to speak with nor did it have an opportunity to meet with community members without Implementing Partner intermediaries present; we did not have an opportunity to follow up with informants to clarify or dig deeper into specific issues; and the time frame for the gender analysis was brief – only two weeks of field time. Despite these limitations, common themes arose across a diverse set of informants, which in the view of the team, allowed us to identify specific gender-related gaps that could be addressed in the development and design of the TCO’s new FTF PAD.

Table 1 below summarizes the main themes in each of the five domains:

Table 1: FEED THE FUTURE GENDER ANALYSIS[footnoteRef:10] [10:

See Appendix 1 for definitions of Gender Domains]

Laws, Policies, Regulations, and Institutional Practices National/Policy

· Support under Presidential Decree to increase women’s status nationally

· Constitution recognizes gender equality

· All children equal under the law

· Law Against Domestic Violence approved in 2013

· Laws considered ‘gender neutral’

· Goal of land reform is to provide legal certificate of land rights, although women continue to face specific and real barriers to obtaining certificate of land rights in their name

· In the past, government dictated up to 70% of farm production must be cotton; however, presently government does not dictate a specific quota while according to NGO, Zan va Zamin farmers voluntarily continue to cultivate cotton because of financial benefit; women do bulk of labor but often do not get paid until end of season when cotton gin monopolies determine price/ton and only then pay growers

· No minimum wage for those being exploited in the cotton/crop fields; payment may be in the form of in-kind rather than cash

· The National Strategy for Education Development of the Republic of Tajikistan 2006-2015 (NSED) recognizes the need for provision of equitable access to basic education, and states an intention to develop comprehensive programs for access of girls from rural areas to primary, secondary and professional education (Amjad, nd). However, rates of girls’ school attendance continues to fall, given many factors including cultural and religious practices, poor school infrastructure, inadequate teacher training, and school costs.

· Legal age of marriage is 18 for boys and girls

· Legal educational requirement is 9th grade Local Government Capacity

· Poor dissemination about and interpretation of laws and policies to district, jamoat and mahalla authorities and to community, especially how local governments would implement or enact laws locally

· Lack of operational guidelines and monitoring mechanism of policy/law implementation; low capacity of government to provide services

· According to UN Women, it is a Presidential Decree that in each Khukumat (local administration) one deputy minister has to be female but it was not clear if this appointment is made in all cases or what portfolio she is assigned; potential tokenism

· Local jamoats do not have control over setting development priorities – over-ridden by central government; they have few resources

· Prohibition against religious marriages is hard to enforce; according to Tajik law religious leaders not allowed to perform religious marriage ceremony (nikah) for non-registered couples – many of these “nikah” marriages involve second wives; in a non-registered marriage women do not have certain rights.

Community Level Implementation

· Plots of land (Presidential land given by government or land-shares in a former collective farm) may not be contiguous, making efficient farming more difficult

· Rules and procedures for getting legal documents are cumbersome and time-consuming; for example, up to 269 steps are needed to register land ownership, taking up to 3 months to complete and requiring trips to the capital; each step is opportunity for bribery, and for women dropping out of the process

· Labor code excludes women from ‘heavy labor’ limiting inclusion of women in some food for work or work for cash activities (e.g., World Bank, World Food Programme projects)

· Government actions produce risky environment for investing in land improvements and as a result farmers are highly risk averse

· Family plots are not registered as agricultural land – not taxed, not eligible for government subsidies

· People un-informed about legal rights

· Difficult for women to pursue property rights after divorce

· Divorce laws provide for property for women, but may be one room in husband’s family’s house; wife and children entitled to no more than 25% of husband’s official salary – no initiative from government to make divorce more fair; in many cases, husband’s parents “owners” of land leaving many younger married women without access to land ownership or title

· Law stipulates that dekhan farms belong to shareholders, but women’s names are not always included as shareholders to reduce tax burden, thus eliminating women’s ownership rights

Cultural Norms and Beliefs

· Men are shown ‘respect’ from wife by putting land and other large assets in his name; men do not need to reciprocate

· Women’s social participation varies by ethnic group and religious norms

· Most families value girls’ education but may favor boys to continue school if school costs are high

· Belief that women cannot be effective leaders

· Men do not want women to know rights/get information

· Divorced women stigmatized, may not be able to return to natal home, often have no rights to property; divorced men are not stigmatized, keep property

· Some in religious community feel women’s/girls’ participation in public forums is inappropriate

· More difficult for educated women to get married – may be ‘difficult’, ‘spoiled’, may challenge husband, earn more

· Men are ‘shamed’ by women taking initiative and making changes in community; women’s level of community activity is dependent on age with younger women much less able to take initiative; older women seem to gain that ability with age

· Men do not want to be managed by women bosses

· Self-help groups for men may help them learn in “safe” groups to not be shamed by inactivity or “helping” women

· Gender-based violence is pervasive, ‘not talked about’, ‘family issue’; both physical and psychological abuse, especially over daughter in-laws, is being practiced in many families

· Changing attitudes among some men, willing to do women’s agriculture work so women can attend savings group meetings: if women’s activity financially benefits men/family then men more willing

· Women have to ‘put up’ with men having second family in Russia as divorce is devastating

· Parents in law eat first, along with guests, then husbands, children and unmarried adults, daughter in law eats last

· Intense pressure on males and females to get married – affects social status; no role for unmarried people

· Because of breadwinner role, men are vulnerable to being trafficked for labor migration

· Daughters, particularly daughters in law are subjected to inferior status within a family

Gender Roles, Responsibilities, and Time Use

· Setting up Water Users’ Associations (WUA) is time consuming (up to 45 days to register informal WUA, then many additional days for drafting bylaws, general assemblies, registration with tax authority etc.); because of women’s multiple responsibilities for household production, reproductive tasks, and farming duties, it may be difficult for them to participate fully throughout process

· WUA Women’s Committees deal with social/family issues, not with business, land, policy, or road issues

· Mother in laws have more free time and power and are more likely to attend meetings than daughter in laws ; sometimes mothers in laws discourage daughter in laws from participating even in trainings where the topic is aimed directly at daughter in laws (e.g., breastfeeding, infant feeding)

· Men not willing to share information and skills with women (some men ask that projects ‘don’t improve women’s skills too much’)

· Women, especially young women, have all responsibilities for household productive and reproductive work

· Household produce equals 55% of overall agriculture production by volume but women’s work remains invisible

· Depending on volunteers for extension services could exacerbate some women’s time poverty, especially if volunteers are women and unpaid; note that not all women have “time poverty,” which likely affects poor, young women more acutely

· Women have a lot of expertise in canning produce and interest in drying and other food processing – opportunity for market development

· Men marry early or migrate to avoid military conscription

· Responsibilities to support families are burdensome and some men go to Russia to escape

· Women are willing to work with male extension workers in group setting, although this depends on age as young women have less freedom of movement

· Negative consequences at community level if women are ‘too empowered’; women leaders are under tough scrutiny by men anticipating women’s failure

· Some comments by informants suggested that women are more involved in non-paying community-based activities because “they have more time”, especially older women, while men are involved mostly in paid work

Access to and Control over Assets and Resources

· Agriculture is often the only work available in rural areas

· People in rural areas have few other forms of collateral than crops, making access to credit more difficult

· Many women’s committees are unregistered and informal, not connected to WUA or other formal groups; for example, there are various civil society women’s committees/organizations in nearly all regions and districts which should be registered with the Ministry of Justice while key informant interviews also suggested there were many informal community-based groups for support or self-help; the latter type of group would not be registered or pay taxes

· Generalized concern/fear of bankruptcy and debt due to previous government land reform schemes

· In Khatlon, 50% of marriages[footnoteRef:11] are not registered so women and children do not have property rights [11: Personal communication, Yusuf Mahmedov, Head of Rushd NGO, August 29, 2013]

· People are not encouraged to share information – hoarding information gives a person advantage

· Interest by women in starting businesses – but few assets to obtain credit and risk averse

· Credit market for women entrepreneurs may be untapped – all women business owners of USAID credit guarantee loans for SME in Tajikistan were first-time borrowers[footnoteRef:12] [12: USAID. 2013. Unlocking Growth Through Credit Guarantees: An overview analysis of loans to women-owned SMEs. Lara Storm.

· Men and women are alone with their problems

· Not all women have access to cell phones; a daughter in-law may not have access to her own cell phone, but may be able to use the family’s phone (this is primarily due to the daughter in-law’s lack of having her own resources)

· Few women able to drive – dependent on others for transportation

· Remittances are a huge part of Tajikistan GDP, but women rarely control them or are able to make decisions about their use or investment, especially young women

· Increasing number of women migrating to Russia and elsewhere (alone or with spouse) to find economic opportunities

· Documents for WUAs are often in men’s names though women do must of the work; this shows ‘respect for men’

· Membership requirements for WUAs include land registration for private plot, so because fewer women have registered land in their names, they are excluded from WUA membership, certainly from WUA leadership, and thus have little voice in water resource management

· Women looking for markets for products

· Market-driven approach is new to most producers

· Very few SMEs – few examples of successful SMEs so people reluctant to risk

· Transaction costs to get produce to market are higher for women

· Women lack negotiation skills

· Self confidence among women is very low

· 60-70% of female producers depend on middlemen to get products to market

· Women don’t know how to invest remittances (average $500/yr) or other income

· Women are clustered in the lowest levels of the value chain due to lack of resources to invest in processing equipment, literacy and knowledge of agricultural or business practices, and restricted access to transport and cultural norms that limit women’s mobility

Patterns of Power and Decision-making

· Women not encouraged/confident to talk in public forums; men ask women what their interests are and then may or may not communicate to district/jamoat councils

· Women comprise low percentage of all levels elected government authorities

· Criteria for leadership positions often depends on level of education - eliminating many capable but uneducated men and women from leadership opportunities

· Many women on local councils are employees – not elected by community so for example saying 5 out of 31 people on jamoat committee are women does not necessarily indicate the women were seen as leaders and elected to these positions or that they have any leadership authority

· Need to work with family unit to enable women to participate in community/market based initiatives

· Decreasing number of women agronomists

· Local jamoat and district government staff have limited skills and knowledge in promoting gender equality

· Local governments want to control women’s groups – use some women’s saving group funds to improve infrastructure

· Committee of Women and Family Affairs in each oblast is responsible for response to gender based violence (GBV) yet have few resources or expertise to respond

· No shelters for women and children experiencing GBV

· No female prosecutors; only 3 female judges in entire country

· Jamoat list not always accurate on which are most vulnerable or female headed households

· Some farms are registered to women but controlled by men, especially where it is advantageous for a man not to be the registered owner (some government committee leaders)

· Men and women need incentives and recognition for hard work to perform differently

· Even though women are the majority of shareholders on dekhan farms, they are under-represented on decision-making committees

CURRENT FTF TAJIKISTAN IMPLEMENTING PARTNER GENDER EQUALITY APPROACHES

It is important that resources are not simply targeted toward women who work on farms and in the fields as laborers, family farmers or commercial farm members, but that creative approaches are adopted that reduce or remove gender-based barriers to change: women’s access to assets; male and female patterns of social participation; social/cultural beliefs, and; legislation/policies/practices that reinforce specific and rigid gender roles along the value chain. With some exceptions, these approaches are lacking from current FTF program activities.

· Implementing Partner (IP) staff clearly recognize the disadvantages that females face in society and in the agriculture sector specifically. However, solutions to these disadvantages are addressed with technical approaches - awareness-raising, training, and collection of sex-disaggregated data that while necessary are insufficient to address the fundamentally low status of females in rural communities. The team heard on a number of occasions “we have a target for XX% of women as training or project participants but we can’t reach that number. Women don’t have time/aren’t interested/aren’t educated enough.” Women will make time if there is a direct benefit to them and the activities suit their schedules and needs. Women farmers want extension services that come to them, reducing their dependence on men for transportation and sharing of information. Women want access to agricultural knowledge such as cultivation techniques, farms management skills, and inputs (seeds, fertilizer, etc.). They want to know how to access and take advantage of markets, local and national, and women want to know their rights. The question for many IPs is how much their activities can deviate from ‘standard’ approaches. If they reach few women because they are focusing on doing more with each woman/women’s group, will USAID see lower numbers as less productivity? Along with this question, IPs need guidance on the extent to which activities that seek to reach women – but which are not focused on technical assistance (TA), product distribution, or traditional training approaches, are ‘allowable’ in their activity budgets.

· Boys and girls are a huge cohort for change in Tajikistan and a growing proportion of the population. The Gender Analysis team heard often that youth are more flexible in their gender attitudes and more open to change. Boys and girls grow up to be farmers – or at least we hope they will. Yet youth are missing from the FTF program. A new school-based health program just beginning implementation by Mercy Corps has a child-child model, which has proven successful in India. However, given the falling rates of girls in some districts in rural Khatlon, the program will miss the most vulnerable girls. Mercy Corps’ “Aflateen” activity that focuses on teaching girls about financial management and reproductive health, could also be a model that may have some applicability to other FTF goals, especially if modeled on a 4H type project model. Boys could participate as well and topics might include business skill development, marketing, market development, agriculture processing, cultivation techniques, breeding, among other topics. “Political will exists to combat gender-based violence.”

· Implementing Partners (IPs) are also aware of pervasive gender-based violence (GBV) in the communities in which they work; yet none are addressing this issue through partnerships with NGOs with experience in GBV or legal protections against this human rights violation. Understandably, IPs have not been required to address this issue in the past. Expertise in this area is limited in Tajikistan due to lack of governmental commitment to funding services, lack of accountability by police and perpetrators, and social norms that reinforce the rights of men and women to punish women and girls for transgressing gender norms[footnoteRef:13]. One informant told us there was political will to address gender-based violence in Tajikistan, but it remains very small. Women and children experiencing GBV have few options or places to go – there is a dearth of shelters, and limited legal and social services to meet women’s physical, psychological and financial needs. One NGO working on GBV, Covoni Umed, is located in Dushanbe and has longer term program options for women. One hospital in Dushanbe has several beds for women experiencing physical abuse but the stay is limited to four days (the beds are also for HIV/AIDs patients). There is one shelter in Qurgonteppe in which only a few women can stay for one week and then have to return to their homes. GBV is uncomfortable, unsettling and - changeable. [13: During key informant interviews we heard that both men and other women often felt justified in physically or psychologically abusing a woman within the household if she did not “look after the children appropriately”, went out of the house without permission or failed to do as she was told, that is, did not conform to gender norms for women. ]

· In areas such as policy reform, water management and agricultural production, IPs should explicitly address gender equality and how they plan to reduce the gender gaps between women and men. For example, in Family Farming Program’s new approach focused on irrigation, policy and home gardens the distinctive roles of women in each area should be explored. In FAST’s new focus on policy, a specific goal to raise awareness of how national policies affect village women and men, plus mechanisms for implementing those policies locally should be included. FAST implementers should also pay attention to the many barriers described in this report that women face in accessing extension services. In looking at developing a new participatory extension model, FAST implementers should address the specific risks for women farmers and men farmers, including market development and access to agricultural resources and technologies.

· One approach mentioned in one interview is working to build trust between buyers and growers, which can be done through meetings with farmers, importers, exporters, fertilizer and input sellers with the goal of linking farmers with private sector actors. Special attention can be given to ensuring women are included in these meetings.

· IPs are not measuring change in attitudes and beliefs as intermediate steps to behavior change, for example whether men and mother in-laws attitudes change toward daughter in-laws. IPs should include more qualitative variables in their Activity Monitoring and Evaluation Plans and conduct process evaluations throughout the course of a project to understand the positive and negative impacts of their programs on males and females, including changes in social attitudes about gender equality and changing attitudes to harmful practices like early marriage, gender based violence and human rights. Indicators can be developed to assess women’s level of self-esteem and confidence, men’s changing attitudes about gender-based violence, and women and men’s views on women’s leadership.

GAPS IN GENDER EQUALITY IDENTIFIED IN WEAI DATA

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) measures the empowerment, agency and inclusion of women in the agriculture sector in an effort to identify and address the constraints that limit women’s full engagement in the agriculture sector. The WEAI is composed of two sub-indices: the Five Domains of Empowerment sub-index (5DE) measures the empowerment of women in five areas, and the Gender Parity sub-index (GPI) measures the average level of equality in the empowerment of men and women within the household. The WEAI is an aggregate index reported at the ZOI level and is based on individual-level data on men and women in the same household and data on women living in households with no adult male. Respondents to the survey module measuring women’s empowerment in agriculture are self-identified ‘primary respondents’ or ‘spouse/partner of primary respondent’.

Data for WEAI was collected in Tajikistan in December 2012 and January 2013 through the USAID/W Feedback mechanism. Because the survey was conducted in the winter, when there is more leisure time as it is in between harvest and planting seasons due to cold weather, the results of women’s time allocation, especially leisure time, may not reflect women’s leisure during all times of the year (for example, during the spring, summer and fall months heavier workloads would be anticipated). The WEAI module dealing with time, captures a woman’s primary and secondary time use allocation, in15 minute increments, in the past day. Further, at each household, interviewers asked to speak with the female and male economic decision-maker of the household and most often ended up talking with the female head of house who would likely be a mother in-law. The age category for daughter in-laws is underrepresented in the female respondents of the WEAI.

Results on the ten WEAI indicators suggest that the most significant gaps for women’s empowerment in Tajikistan are as follows: 1) access to and decisions on credit,2) purchase, sale or transfer of assets, and 3) group membership. Alternately, Tajik women achieved a higher empowerment score on two indicators: 1) workload, and 2) leisure.

These results tell us that for women in Tajikistan, the major impediments to their empowerment include their ability to access credit and to be able to make decisions about use of that credit. They have little ability to decide on the purchase, sale or transfer of assets. As noted elsewhere in this report, women lack the ability to participate in civic affairs, especially becoming active group members.

As noted elsewhere, the timing of the surveys (winter months) and respondent choice (mother in-law) may mean that empowerment scores reflecting a respondents full work load (during the production season: spring, summer) and scores of younger women are not accessible in the data. In addition, in Tajikistan the WEAI response rate was 50%, perhaps due to the long length of the survey and respondent fatigue and many husbands refused to give consent for their wives to participate. These issues should be explored through future WEAI surveys, if possible.

GENDER DISPARITIES TO ADDRESS IN NEW PAD

Table 2. Promising Practices for Working with Women Smallholders What Works for Women 2012.

Economic empowerment is not enough, underlying gender inequalities must be challenged

Collective action is key to economic and social empowerment

Access to productive resources is essential

Appropriate extension services, research, and technologies

Increase access to and strengthen markets and financial resources

Disaster resilience and risk management approaches must be gender-sensitive and integrated with development interventions

The gender analysis points to many policy, resource and power related inequalities that must be addressed, concurrently and continuously along with improved agricultural methods and inputs to truly transform the agricultural sector in the FTF ZOI to increase production, increase incomes, diversify livelihoods and reduce nutrition deficits, especially for women and children. Reducing gender-related gaps and constraints is neither an easy nor linear process, but sustainable impacts depend on it[footnoteRef:14]. Activities to reduce gender inequalities should be integrated into ‘traditional’ FTF program activities and should focus on three broad outcomes: [14: USAID. Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy 2012.]

· Reduce gender disparities in access to, control over and benefit from resources, wealth, economic, social, political, and cultural opportunities and services;

· Increase capability of women and girls to realize their rights, determine their life outcomes, and influence decision-making in households, communities, and societies[footnoteRef:15], and [15: Ibid.]

· Reduce gender-based violence and mitigate its harmful effects on individuals and communities Overall Approach

• An important goal of the FTF in Tajikistan should be to increase the percentage of women with access to land in conditions that ensure security of tenure. This is the single most important condition for economic empowerment for women and an important predictor of farmers’ investment in long term improvements or willingness to accept risks associated with taking loans/credit. While other donors are also working on this issue (e.g., World Bank, Oxfam) it is so crucial to female empowerment that it should be included as a specific outcome in the FTF portfolio as well. Women, as well as men, must be made aware of their land rights, including how to access them.

· In addition to technical approaches, it is critical that the social factors limiting women’s access and participation be addressed.