Gender studies

The poverty rate in rural areas in 2000-01 was 33.6 percent compared to 27.8 in urban areas; 27.1 in rural and 17.6 in urban areas in 2007. Between 2000-01 and 2004, urban poverty decreased dramatically by over 32 percent. But progress slowed drastically between 2004 and 2007: the decline was a little over 6 percent. 

Gender analysis of agriculture  

The process of transformation and creation of the market mechanisms of economic development is based on the strategy that covers macroeconomic stability, institutional market and restructuring of production sectors of the economy.   The main objective is to create favorable economic conditions for development of an individual and small business and to provide support to vulnerable levels of the population. On the assumption of assigned tasks, a special attention was given to development of women’s entrepreneurship in rural areas and women’s attraction to farming activities. Though, the level of women’s participation in development of farmers’ movement is not sufficient yet and requires relevant studying and developing certain measures to increase a number of female farmers that lets essentially to effect on the growth of living standard of the population in rural areas. Women make up 48.2 percent of total number of able-bodied population employed in agriculture. From the beginning of reforms it is being observed the process of decline in women’s employment in rural areas, in view of decreasing the opportunities for job placement in formal sector.  Rural women face the certain difficulties in the course of competition on a labor market, as far as the process of reforming the agriculture sector brought inevitably to change of employment structure in rural area. Besides, the wide range of rural women’s duties in household does not allow them to be active on the labour market and forces to give up looking for a job. Women are mostly responsible for non-paid household work, and besides care of children, elderly, sick, or disabled family members, they work on the family plots, or dehkan farm, at the kitchen garden, involved in livestock rearing, and etc. According to findings of the household survey, conducted in rural areas in three regions of Uzbekistan, it is mostly wives (73 percent), daughters or daughters in law (63 percent) who are responsible for unpaid household work. Husbands, sons or sons-in-law are responsible for unpaid household chores only in 2-8 percent of the households.[1] Rural Women express their will to start business activities; however, they feel lack of entrepreneurial skills, they afraid of blindness, regarding laws and regulations, lack of mobility, and time poverty. The entrepreneurial activities of rural women mostly focused on micro and small-scale enterprises, cross border trade, subcontracting work at home or street trading. The integration of rural women into the formal sector is constrained by limited access to credit and property. Women are less competitive on the labor market. Consenting to any job, women are busy with nonqualified work, not requiring high level of training. But from the other side, women are mostly engaged in seasonal kinds of agricultural works, and that accordingly provides for seasonal payments. It is essentially to note that in the process of reforming agricultural sector a tendency to the growth of remuneration in the sector emerged. 

 Women’s role in agriculture, gender aspects of farmer’s movement

The process of reorganizing shirkats was happening on the basis of tender where a special attention was given to availability of starting capital and equipment for the persons who wanted to deal with farming, awareness of agricultural production was being examined, and the priorities was being given to former shirkat members, inhabitants of the local area. However, this process was going on definitely not in every region, and not everywhere women could have opportunity for equal participation in tenders, as far as traditionally, they do not dispose of required resources.According to expert appraisals, activization peak of farmers’ movement fell on 2005-2006 and the process of enlarging leasehold farms has been observed: more successful farmers began to acquire lands from less successful farmers by this or another way. During the campaign on leasehold farms enlargement the total number of farms reduced more than 2 times. At present, the total number of farms is 73810 (01.05.2014)[4] compare to 190 thousands in 2008. According to data of Association of dehkan and leasehold farms, 17 000 women were led leasehold farms (or 7.2 percent out of total) in June 2007[5]. After the start of the campaign for enlarging leasehold farms the number of farms led by women reduced to 12084 (5.5 percent out of total) in August 2008[6]. Currently, number of farms led by women is 4444 (6 percent out of total)[7].  These numbers certify that the processes of reforming in rural areas and mechanism of reorganization of shirkat farms to leasehold farms went on with the definite difficulties which did not contribute to the wide women’s attraction.

              The smallest number of farms led by women is in Navoi region of 1.4 per cent, as well as in the Syrdarya and Bukhara regions, 2.7 and 5.1 percent respectively. The largest number of farms led by women is in Khorezm region - 13.1 percent out of total number of farms. 

Table  5.  Distribution of private farms by sex and regions (01.05.2014)

Regions	As percent of total		Distribution by sex
	women	men	women	Men
Republic of  Karakalpakstan	3.9	4.6	5.2	94.8
Andijan	11.1	8.8	7.5	92.5
Bukhara	5.1	5.4	5.7	94.3
Jizzakh	10.4	7.8	7.9	92.1
Kashkadarya	8.8	11.1	4.9	95.1
Navoi	1.4	2.4	3.5	96.5
Namangan	10.9	7.0	9.0	91.0
Samarkand	11.9	11.3	6.7	93.3
Sirdarya	2.7	7.5	2.3	97.7
Surkhandarya	5.2	7.1	7.9	92.1
Tashkent	9.2	8.6	6.4	95.6
Ferghana	6.3	12.1	3.2	96.8
Khorezm	13.1	6.3	11.9	88.1
Total
In percentage	100.0	100.0	6.0	94.0
In thousands	4444	69366

 

 

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Calculations based on data of the Council of Farmers of Uzbekistan.

Table 6.  Distribution of women-farmers by age and regions (01.05.2014)

Regions	As percent of total
	Share of women-farmers at the age of, including:
	Under 30	30-40	40-50	50- 60	60 and over
Republic of  Karakalpakstan	3.5	5.1	5.2	1.3	0
Andijan	18.0	12.9	9.8	5.6	14.4
Bukhara	5.1	7.0	4.1	4.9	3.2
Jizzakh	24.2	17.7	4.3	3.6	5.4
Kashkadarya	2.3	6.4	10.9	14.1	3.6
Navoi	0.9	1.2	1.9	0.7	1.8
Namangan	17.7	7.7	10.2	14.3	3.6
Samarkand	8.1	14.8	15.4	4.9	4.5
Sirdarya	2.3	2.2	3.4	3.2	0
Surkhandarya	9.0	5.4	4.2	5.6	0
Tashkent	0.5	4.9	10.3	18.9	11.7
Ferghana	1.8	7.1	6.5	4.0	20.7
Khorezm	6.5	7.6	13.8	18.9	31.1
Total
In percentage	100	100	100	100	100
Number, persons	566	1214	1626	816	222

Source: Calculations based on data of the Council of Farmers of Uzbekistan

There is a lack of sustainable mechanisms of interaction of farmers in the regions and the structures aimed to provide all possible assistance and support. Most of women know little or nothing about the best practices of sustainable agriculture management. Women farmers need advisory, information and mentoring services not only to improve their agronomic knowledge, but also they need professional advice in the field of legal knowledge, banking, as well as the basics of doing business.  

 UN Women, USAID, CACAARI, ICARDA and other international organizations are providing training programs for women farmers in different areas of Uzbekistan. UN Women has been working on improvement of women’s access to land and USAID is providing support to ten legal aid centers that offer women-farmers information on their rights through training sessions and workshops. Central Asia and the Caucasus Association of Agriculture al Research Institutions (CACAARI) began implementing the program in 2013, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources (MAWR) of Uzbekistan, the Uzbek Scientific Production Center for Agriculture, ICARDA, and the Tashkent State Agrarian University.

11. Gender and water management