Gender and water in Central Asia: First steps

Problems

The Central Asian region includes five states located in the basins of the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In rural areas, where 63% of the population lives, the welfare of the rural population is determined by income from agricultural production and processing of its products, where more than 85% of all water resources are used. Moreover, the population of these countries has a large number of dependants per working person. The ratio of working people to non-working people is 1 to 2.5. Therefore, the well-being of the inhabitants of these countries depends on the availability of water resources, fair distribution of water, sound management of water resources, taking into account the interests of all segments of the population, men and women. Meanwhile, women, who bear the main burden in rural families of raising children, housekeeping and cooking, are involved in seasonal heavy field work. However, due to custom, they are deprived of access to the decision-making process. Many people traditionally explain the difference in the social status of women and men and the lack of equality between them by biological reasons.

Programs/projects

The topic “Gender and water” was considered by the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination (ICWC) in a number of projects to identify the impact of this factor on the sustainability of water and land use:

The project “Gender Aspects in the Context of Access and Management of Water Resources” was carried out by the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination (ICWC) jointly with the Canadian McGill University with the support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in the Republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan (2003-2004);

The project “Features of gender processes in the agricultural and water sectors of the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus” was carried out by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) together with the ICWC (2005). This project included developing a procedure and questionnaires to identify the target audience, collecting basic socio-economic information, entering data into a database and processing it, and producing a final report.

Results:

Monitoring, voicing the problem

To monitor the aspect of gender equality or inequality existing in the countries of Central Asia, performers from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan were involved. Within their countries, performers were given the right to choose the most representative types of makhali, villages and households (makhali are local communities consisting of a certain number of households), entire villages, farms, tenants and individual households, etc. The survey was conducted in the form of a survey of individual farmers and members of their families using a specially designed questionnaire, while both women and men had the opportunity to express their opinions. The survey was conducted by specialists of the Scientific Information Center of the Interstate Commission for Water Coordination (SIC ICWC) under the guidance of CIDA specialists using the gender analysis methodology of FAO and ADB with financial support from ADB and GWP. The survey results were summarized in the work “Gender Aspect in Water Resources Management” - “On a Study of Representative Households in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan”, Tashkent, 2006.

This work was dictated by the need to demonstrate the existing real situation in the region. Existing laws granting men and women equal rights to education, land, water, etc. are not always implemented due to local conditions, mentality and economic difficulties. This situation existed before. However, at present, the decline in national income in rural areas of all countries in the region has hit women hard, first of all. The specific situation of the transition economy in the countries of the region is characterized by the temporary migration of men to other countries in search of work and the increased responsibility of women for the survival of their families.

Gender issues have been raised in the countries of the Central Asian region for several years. However, in agriculture and water management these problems have not yet been sufficiently revealed. The studies carried out were a priority and showed their importance and feasibility. Surveys have found that on average only 3.2% of women have the right to independently manage the family budget. Less than 5% of women received access to land through the organization of a farm as an owner. The survey revealed that 90% of respondents believe that only a man:

has rights to use land and water;
has access to agricultural machinery and the market;
enjoys priority when receiving a loan;
decides which crops should be grown on the farm;
has the real right to make decisions on the use and sale of agricultural products.

According to local residents, in all republics, water needs for irrigation are covered by less than 50%. The percentage of households that have a centralized supply of piped water varies widely: from 4-5% in Kyrgyzstan and up to 25-59% in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. This average level of public water supply often does not take into account the fact that sometimes there is simply no water in the water supply. This happens due to a lack of electricity or water itself. This situation can sometimes be associated with the low solvency of water consumers. As a result, in more than 60% of households, the water provider is the woman. On average, women spend more than one hour daily to collect water (sometimes even up to 2 hours!!!) At the same time, the entire process of delivering and storing water cannot guarantee adequate quality of drinking water.

In some countries, more than 50% of rural families have a living income from household plots and livestock breeding, based on unpaid female and child labor. This creates certain restrictions for women. In addition, the low level of communal services increases the cost of their physical labor, which negatively affects the development of women. The massive involvement of women in agricultural work in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan is seasonal, and they usually perform the most labor-intensive and low-paid types of work. Women do all the manual labor involved in cotton cultivation and also hand-harvest cotton and most other crops in these countries. At the same time, only 4.5-9.0% of them have access to water distribution for irrigation. Taking into account the fact that a large proportion of women have higher or secondary specialized education (14.8% have higher education), the gap in the contribution of women and men to the family budget is 55%. Sacrificing personal interests for fear of losing the opportunity to work and earn money, women agree to work in low-prestige, low-skilled and low-paid jobs.

Thus, the survey led to the conclusion that the problems of women in rural areas are very serious, including limited access to water, land, financial and physical resources, as well as to education and culture. Most rural women have certain limitations in realizing their potential due to insufficient qualifications and lack of knowledge in the field of water and land resource management. Traditionally, decisions of interest to all residents of a rural community, such as the use of land for growing various crops and the provision of irrigation water for these crops (water supply schedule, quantity, source, cost and payment) are discussed at regular meetings of representatives of each family or makhali, who are usually men. The same situation is observed at trainings for farmers, which are conducted by agricultural extension services, as well as at meetings held by the local administration.

The results obtained during the survey prompted SIC ICWC to take a deeper look at issues of social policy regarding rural women. The task was set to move to the implementation of practical tasks aimed at reducing the level of gender inequality. In this context, the following tasks were formulated:

organize, on the basis of ongoing regional projects, events to raise women's awareness of their rights to water, land and protection of their interests;
building on the social mobilization carried out in these projects, especially in the Fergana Valley and the Hungry Steppe, focus on the high potential of women in increasing the productivity of irrigated agriculture as the basis for the fight against poverty;
identify proactive women holding leadership and responsible positions in farms, WUAs, Water User Councils of canals and irrigation systems, and even in Basin Departments;
organize special training for women farmers and help them achieve high yields when growing cotton, wheat and vegetables;
popularize the experience of women leaders in water and agriculture.

Strengthening women's activities in the water sector

An important result of the initiative was the further development of the topic of Gender and Water in Central Asia.

At three scientific and practical Conferences of the ICWC - in 2002, 2004 and 2006, special sections were organized on gender issues of water and rural areas. Each time, more than 50 women specialists from the field participated in them, which made it possible to attract the attention of decision-makers to this specific problem. At the same time, a special window was opened on the ICWC website to popularize the role of women. More than 10 women participated in the World Water Forum in Mexico as part of the regional delegation. The first book dedicated to Gender and Water was published in 2004.

Practical work to promote the involvement of women and their more active participation in water resources management was organized through the IWRM Fergana and Copernicus projects. Community mobilizers who organized the implementation of IWRM principles in pilot plots irrigated by three canals, with a total command area of 126 thousand hectares, were specifically tasked with conducting surveys and mobilizing women. As a result, already in 2005, women began to be promoted to leadership positions in agriculture and water management.

Social mobilization activities activate various forms of stakeholder participation in the management and use of water resources: the creation of water user associations (WUAs) and water user groups within WUAs; organization of water distribution within water use units. However, gender issues are also taken into account in the form of preliminary assessments. Some of the more active women were selected to participate in inter-republican training on the use of modern technologies in water management and the cultivation of cotton, grains and legumes. More than 50 of them received certificates from the ICWC Training Center.

Thus, in Kazakhstan, out of 18 basin organizations, women were appointed as managers in 3 of them. All of them were trained at the ICWC Training Center. In the interstate South Fergana Canal (SFC) command zone, some women farmers were given personal attention in the project. One of them, Mastura Sayfutdinova, achieved high productivity on her farm with a net income of more than $800/ha, which is 4 times more than the average in the Fergana Valley. First, she was recommended for the position of chairman of the WUA, to which her farm belonged, and then she was nominated for the position of chairman of the Union of Water Users of the South Fergana Canal (SVYuFK). For the first time in Central Asia, a non-governmental organization of this type (SVYuFK) headed by her, which manages a large canal with a total irrigated area of 105 thousand hectares, has become a school for many water management organizations in the region. On her initiative, SVYuFK is working to reduce water costs and in 2 years has achieved a reduction in the head water intake into the canal by 18%, which is more than 180 million cubic meters of water per year. She also found funds to ensure drinking water supply to two large villages where people previously collected water from irrigation ditches. Her leadership position helps her promote greater recruitment of women to work in the WUA as accountants, dispatchers and even shift supervisors at SVYuFK. The key to her success is the active position of a female leader who is not afraid of the “high authorities”, as is usually the case at the local level. When negotiating with local administration officials, women are more courageous in overcoming all barriers than men. As a result, the experience gained by Mastura and her workers allows them to spread the practice of farming in farms with high income and water productivity throughout the canal command area and in the future throughout the republic as a whole. An increase in income per hectare of at least 2 times implies a reduction in food shortages and poverty among the population.

Interstate meetings on gender issues, organized in the form of training, were also of great importance at the national level. For example, in Kyrgyzstan, through the involvement of female WUA chairmen, it was possible to identify a number of pressing issues that were sent for resolution to the Director of the country’s Water Resources Department. Interstate and interregional exchanges of views at these seminars made it possible to create a “gender plenum” of water workers and water users. At the same time, it was revealed that women are more active and non-recognition of traditional eastern authorities than men.

The creation of a network (GWANET) was the next step in our program.

In 2007, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Scientific Information Center of the Interstate Coordination Water Commission (SIC ICWC) of Central Asia signed a Cooperation Agreement on the creation of the Gender and Water Network in Central Asia (GWANET). The goal of cooperation is to promote gender equality in water resource management in Central Asian countries by increasing the role of women in decision-making processes.

Goals of creating the GWANET network:

increasing gender awareness (collection and dissemination of information, meetings with target groups, awareness-raising seminars, media, etc.);
capacity building of water management organizations (trainings);
creation of the Gender and Water Network (GWANET) website for the exchange of information between network participants on the issue of introducing a gender perspective in the water sector.

Conducting discussions with stakeholders to identify problems in water resources management, discussing ways to solve them, and exchanging experience on the ongoing work to achieve gender balance is possible through the created network. The network's newsletters contain all the news in the field of gender in all the republics of the region and the results of the Gender and Water seminars. These bulletins are published every month and distributed in printed form (more than 120 copies each month), and the bulletin is also placed in the GWAnet-ICWC window. More than 500 people settled on the site last month.

In addition, every month, groups of field instructors who work with farmers and give them recommendations (on technology for growing crops, timing and quantity of irrigation, etc.) distribute 1000 copies of newsletters through mobilizers in Andijan, Fergana and Sughd regions. Monitoring has been organized in two directions: through mobilizers in the regions who monitor the effectiveness of using field recommendations and through feedback on published newsletters on the website www.cawater-info.net. Here's one example: "I read your newsletter with great interest. I would like to thank all the people who contributed to its publication. Thank you for an interesting, timely material that contains a lot of information. Your newsletters make a real and tangible contribution to the promotion and support of gender equality. Unfortunately, there are very few sources of information of this type other than your newsletter!"

The project held seminars in which 100 people took part. The project trained 25 instructors to further disseminate knowledge and awareness on issues of gender equality in water resources management.

The network involves specialists at all levels and represents the following target groups:

Macro level – decision makers;
Intermediate level – water resources specialists, researchers, NGOs;
Village level – rural population (women and men).

Key Success Factors

Creating a website and GWANET network makes it possible to:

Raise awareness and promote gender mainstreaming in the region
Achieve greater understanding of gender issues in water management
Exchange experiences and best practices on the issue, translate theoretical concepts on gender into real action
Create a framework for mainstreaming gender issues and a platform for women’s voices in the region’s leadership structures
Lay the groundwork for further collaboration leading to successful water management that takes into account gender equality
Create a network of interested agencies and individuals to facilitate further cooperation at both national and regional levels.

Main obstacles

High employment of women in rural areas and difficulties with their social mobilization
The need for funding sources to maintain the network in the future

Looking forward – sustainability and replication

The Gender and Water Initiative is developing in the region in the following directions:

Problems are identified and attention is focused on the existence of the problem of gender inequality in the water sector;
Work is being done to raise awareness on gender and water issues, trainings are being organized that increase knowledge and teach the ability to conduct dialogue and defend one’s interests;
The next phase should include capacity building through professional development to increase mobilization and self-awareness, and identify leaders, including women, in water management. Preparation of recommendations for national and local authorities on how to include gender aspects in water sector development programs and how to develop gender policies in the water sector of Central Asian countries.