DUSHANBE, May 12, 2015, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan Water Supply and Sanitation (TajWSS) Network will hold a special event to discuss a role of women in water sector in Tajikistan here on May 13.
According to TajWSS Project, the event will be facilitated by Oxfam GB within the framework of the project, Tajikistan Water Supply and Sanitation, funded by Swiss Development Agency (SDC) and implemented in partnership with the Government of Tajikistan and UNDP.
Gender refers to the different roles, rights, and responsibilities of men and women and the relations between them. Gender does not simply refer to women or men, but to the way their qualities, behaviors, and identities are determined through the process of socialization. Gender is generally associated with unequal power and access to choices and resources. The different positions of women and men are influenced by historical, religious, economic and cultural realities. These relations and responsibilities can and do change over time.
It has become increasingly accepted that women should play an important role in water management and that this role could be enhanced through the strategy of gender mainstreaming.
In rural Tajikistan, women and children bare the primary responsibility for managing household water demand. Women are also traditionally excluded from primary decision-making roles, both within traditional community structures and within formal governmental institutions, especially at the local level.
As the primary actor of water and sanitation at household and village levels, the role of women has to be enhanced through active participation in all aspects and activities, including in decision-making process.
According to the recent SDC assessment in communities targeted by Tajikistan Water Supply and Sanitation project, women and children under 14 spend on average 4-6 hours of daily water carrying (in some cases up to 8), which has a significant impact on time availability for women, and especially on children’s school attendance. Usually, the only acceptable reason for a man to carry water is the illness of a female member of the household. Lack of water and sanitation is also affecting women’s mobility. Not only do women spend most of their time fetching water and have narrow paths of daily movement within their community, they are also reluctant to venture from their own communities due to the lack of safe and secure sanitation facilities in public places (market places, etc.)
In Oxfam’s water program attention is paid to the quality of women’s engagement to refrain from homogenizing women as a single social category. Oxfam also ensures that “gender” does not become a synonym for “women” rather than transformation of gender relations. For example, in addition to supporting women’s leadership, the projects are promoting men and boys involvement in non-traditional areas (addressing prejudices around skewed division of labor between women and men), building on lessons learnt from Oxfam’s work engaging men on gender equality issues globally.
As highlighted by SDC (Gender Assessment SDC Rural Drinking Water Program Tajikistan, March 2013), gender mainstreaming is inherently time-consuming (as gender is deeply rooted in political, socio-cultural, educational and economic aspects and is a major element in the way people identify themselves and others). It involves challenges to values and beliefs, ways of working and people’s sense of self and their understanding of others.
TajWSS Network provides a platform for discussions and further developments of abovementioned issues, further to emphasize key directions and strategic gender objectives for the work of the Network members; ensuring gender is an integral part of policy discussions on drinking water and sanitation in Tajikistan; as well as explore links with policies and projects focusing on water supply to enable gender being comprehensively addressed in the water sector.
The event reportedly intends to bring attention of national stakeholders, government representatives and other members of the network on the issues of Gender in water sector developments in Tajikistan. This will be done through number of presentations and discussion points in 3 main thematic areas: 1) national policies and strategies on gender: How gender is prioritized by the relevant government stakeholders; 2) women specialists in water sector in Tajikistan: education and skills; and 3) gender mainstreaming in the work of the international organizations in Tajikistan: lessons learned and integration of gender in the development programs and projects.
One of the key objectives of the event is in establishing a national working group on Gender and Water developments in Tajikistan. The working group will be chaired by the Committee for Women and Family affairs, which is responsible for gender policies and strategies at the country level. National working group will be established and facilitated within the framework of the TajWSS Network, and aimed at the following: overall review of gender issues in water sector in Tajikistan, including water resources management, the leadership role of women and their participation; and on the basis of the overall reviews and studies an action plan will be elaborated for the working group , which will contain its strategic directions and developments, including gender and water strategy.
The Network of Stakeholder Organizations on Sustainable Water Supply and Sanitation was created on November 12, 2009. The TajWSS Network is a national multistakeholder platform of actors from government, international institutions, donors, science institutions and academia, public, private and other not-for-profit organizations in the water and sanitation subsector in Tajikistan, who gather regularly in plenary meetings and working groups to advance the national drinking-water and sanitation agenda.
