Gender Livelihood and Socio Economic Situation in Rural Kyrgyzstan
Baseline study in the framework of the Project Empower Women, Benefit for All
18.06.2014
Kyrgyzstan, population about 6 million people is rather a large agrarian, mountainous and poor country. Consequently villagers are confronted to health issues that are closely related to their limited access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation facilities and poor hygiene practices.
Despite of the existing law on gender equality, ratified key international documents aimed at protection of women’s rights, including CEDAW and MDG, as well as implementation of number of state programs, the situation of women continues to be difficult. Violence is increasing, unemployment level is higher for women compared to that of men by 20%, the gap between average salary of men and women is increasing. Many households are headed by women due to the mass labour migration of men to work in Kazakhstan or Russia. Women also have carry a double labour burden. Traditional views of women as subservient to men and as home-makers, serve as barriers to women’s education, employment, opportunities and full decision making powers in the family and community.
This baseline research helped WECF partner organizations to find out urgent problems faced by rural women, discuss with them alternative solutions and women’s needs in capacity building. Thus every partner organization developed individual activity plans to respond rural women’s interests and widen opportunities to empower women in villages and significant strides have been made towards fulfilling its commitments under the Beijing Platform of Action.
The Baseline study is also available in the Russian Language.
The baseline study was carried out as part of the WECF EWA Program -"Empower Women- Benefit All"