Greetings to the organizers for starting a very topical discussion in the forum.
I would like to share experience of implementing a Joint Programme on Rural Women Economic Empowerment in Kyrgyzstan. It is implemented jointly by UN Women, FAO, IFAD and WFP, and has actually been launched as a result of the CSW 58 on Rural Women.
JP has been designed to address the breadth of challenges faced by rural women, however, practical implementation had to be tailored to the priority needs. Hence, while impressive results were achieved on accessing productive assets, improving nutrition and food security, increasing income, such issues as reproductive rights and violence against women have been sidelined. Practical focus has proven effective in preparing ground for rural women to become politically active, engaging in local decision-making processes, and standing for local elections. It also gave them better voice in families, and household methodologies have been useful in starting re-negotiation of power, distribution of unpaid work, etc. Household methodologies are excellent way of engaging men without directy investing funds and providing resources to men. The results and transformational changes in rural women's lives have been recognized by an external evaluation and mosty attributed to the good coordination mechanism, which allowed UN agencies to deliver as one, going with an intergated development package to the same group of beneficiaries with their specific expertise, and addressing multiple dimensions of poverty, food insecurity and gender inequality.
Some reflections on the challenges relate to JP not explicitely addressing issues of reproductive rights and violence. JP did not aim to work on such root causes of inequalities, as education and social norms. These were partly addresses by JP, also through building partnerships with other UN agencies, but due to limited funding could not be addressed at the required level. Lack of funds also prevented JP from upscaling results at the policy level. While a good progress is made in Kyrgyzstan's legislation, policy discussions on gender issues remain within the boudaries of social policies, and are de-prioritized in sectoral policies. Especially, this concerns macro-economic policies, which have important gender implications, but are often seen as gender-nuetral by policy-makers. Engagement in macro-economic discussions, including fiscal policies, priorities for government spending, monetary and trade policies is necessary to bring gender dimension into these discussions. Reduction, redistribution and recognition of unpaid work requires government spending on provision of these services to rural areas. Cases exist demonstrating economic effects of investing in care economy on the growth in the number of jobs and poverty reduction. These policy discussions are not possible yet due to lack of expertise in the civil society and national government, and sectoral experts.
Ms. Jipara Turmamatova