Just found very interesting statistics about the percentage of men and women working at administrative positions in the government. It is 86% men and 14% women at top positions, 91% men and 9% women at mid-level positions and 41% men and 59% women at junior positions. So guess who’s got the power in this country?
Some of recent highlights was talking to a lot of HIV positive people from Kyrgyzstan from other countries of the former Soviet Union. I admire their energy and activism. It takes a lot of strength to be open about their status and to live knowing that there is no cure yet. I wish we had so much energy flowing in the women’s/gender ‘movement’.
The past weeks have been hectic and I was in and out of the country which probably is noticeable on the blog. The most interesting information flow that I am coming across everyday is how LGBT Organization ‘Labrys’ is responding to the police visits that it has encountered in the past weeks. The first raid which happened two weeks ago received a lot of responses and reactions because it was an official event with guests from Dutch donor organizations and because Labrys acted on the situation using international human rights protection mechanisms. Labrys contacted Human Rights Watch and used UN Special Procedures to address the issue. Human Rights Watch issued an official press release condemning the police raid while the UN sent a note to Kyrgyz Ministry of International Affairs.
The press release has a photo of the district police officer who lead the raid and it was put on the wall in the community center to be shown to other police who might want to raid the center. The community center staff has a strategy to deal with new visits and list of contacts of people and organization who could help in case of police visit. There are two duty staff at nights and Labrys is in high alert due to possible revenge from the police which other human rights activists warned Labrys about. Meanwhile the reactions to the visit are coming from all over the world with LGBT organizations expressing solidarity and asking what they can do about the situation.
In my opinion the reactions and the impact that the information has made will improve Labrys advocacy because the Kyrgyz human rights activists who usually do not relate LGBT matters to their priority work can now understand that LGBT activists experience the same harrassment and pressure from the state that the other organizations do. Also Labrys realized that there is a lot of support from both within and outside of Kyrgyzstan and will be more active in its advocacy work.
Yesterday evening Euronews reported about the riots of Muslims who were protesting against women receiving the rights to inherit property equally to men in Bangladesh. It was the first time that I actually realized that globally women’s struggle for equal rights will take dozens if not hundreds of years. It was maybe a hundred of women marching, some of them had severe scars on their faces after men who proposed to them spilled acid on them. Men were throwing rocks and screaming. Rather a strange picture for a post-Soviet person, women against men walking on the streets.
I hope that Kyrgyzstan will never turn to Sharia law which is the justification that they use in Bangladesh.
Yesterday I had the honor of attending a public discussion of social and environmental policies of European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. To my surprise I only found gender in two places of the 72-page-long document . When I inquired why the document does not cover gender, a representative of EBRD responded that EBRD does not have the expertise to provide gender perspective within the document. I realized that one of the issues that exist still even for large institutions is that there is a problem with lack of expertise in gender mainstreaming and few people even among professional consultants look at gender as a factor of utmost importance in their assessments and recommendations.
From theory and practice that I have been exposed to, it is very clear that any intervention or project or program or legislation or action affects men and women differently, just like it affects different ethnic groups differently, people with special needs differently. Yet as gender is usually the most rigid categories the differences are vast, yet it is usually assumed that they are not there. Market-oriented firms do assess their market through a gender lense, why don’t other institutions?
Today I acutely felt the differences between mainstream gender NGOs and gender NGOs working with stigmatized communities like sex workers or lesbian women. CEDAW reports that come from Kyrgyzstan hardly include the latter groups and the people working for putting together the reports usually come from mainstream NGOs e.g. working with ‘normal’ women. A normal woman would be a young woman, probably married, probably with one or two or three children and probably in need of support in terms of a mini-credit or legal support in case she is divorcing or shelter/consultation in case she is living with an abusive partner. The usual approach to this ‘normal’ woman is victimizing, she does not sound like an agent in the reports but rather as somebody who is a recipient of care and support.
The ‘other’ women are not present in the mainstream reports or discussed in one sentence because it is a requirement (’the number of sex workers under 16 years old has increased due to harsh economic situation’ or ‘criminal code mentions forced lesbian sexual contacts as grounds for longer rape sentence’).
This post is rather a short though on the larger reports, I will be looking at the texts soon and posting more in detail about some of the interesting mismatches in the reports.
I am one of the people who do not really trust post-Soviet doctors. Knowing about their low salaries and acute need for extra cash is not the best asset when you are planning to visit a gynecologist. There is also a concern about corruption in medical universities and medical diplomas on sale.
Today a gynecologist tried to persuade me to buy some type of medicine called ‘women’s formula’ which supposedly would improve my health. I asked other women who visited the same gynecologist and found out that they were offered the same medicine but had different gynecological diagnoses. The medical facility that I visited is half-NGO, half-business and I was hoping that I would not hear about this kind of pseudo-medicines especially when I am worried about my own health.
It is quite common that medical facilities in Kyrgyzstan have dozens of bright posters of different types of medicines on display and medical professionals are contacted by pharmaceutical companies and asked to promote their products in exchange for a decent sum of money or per cent from each sold medicine. Sometimes you can buy medicines right from the doctor, sometimes in special pharmacies. They also usually cost three-four times more than the usual medicines.
My concern in this situation is the health and financial risks that women have when they depend on advise of a doctor who is selling this kind of medicines. The costs are high and results of the treatment are low plus it is also an unfair power relationship because the women believe that the doctor acts in their best interest.
24.kg reports about 5388 children living in orphanages in Kyrgyzstan, 80 % of these children have parents who could take care of them. The factors that contribute to abandoning children are diverse and complicated. The first and foremost is taboo on sexual education and communicating about sex, women do not have a choice but to agree to unprotected sex and then some might not even have the information how pregnancy may occur. The second issue is the poor economic situation of families or single parents which sometimes forces them to leave children at the orphanage. It broke my heart when I was visiting a toddler orphanage some years ago and I saw mothers coming to visit their children on Sundays. The third issue is yet again related to social taboo on sexuality and large numbers of children in families. Kyrgyz women are expected to have at least three children and get married by age of 22-23 which puts some of them in dire poverty because they did not have a chance to acquire skills to sustain a well-paid job to afford raising three children. Early marriages and unplanned early age pregancies usually result in a lot of unexpected children and parents abandon them.
I am at a seminar near Berlin and doing a lot of gendered discussions. I am a co-teamer for Queer Animation and our group of ten people prepared an animation about some of the Yogyakarta principles (international law in relation to LGBT people). It can be viewed on Youtube.
The week brought a lot of discoveries and I learned a lot of methods of disseminating information and perspectives. Most of them are very interactive and I can’t wait to start using them in my work.
Fresh news from the Parliament. Maternal leaves have been extended to three years and the male initiator of the bill also is hoping that if the husbands will earn a lot of money than the wives would be able to stay at home with the child for life.
From the point of view of child’s interest this is a nice gesture. From the woman’s point of view, it can turn into an employment issue. The employers are not generally happy about hiring young women because of the pregnancy risk. It is also unusual that the employers pay the women on maternity leaves as they are required by law. Therefore, it is unlikely that women’s situation is going to improve with the longer maternal leaves. The usual story is that the mother either stays at home until the family is able to afford taking their child to kindergarten or her extended family (usually a younger sister or distant female relative) takes care of the child while she is at work.
The statement of the MP Rahatbek Irsaliev who initiated the bill about staying at home ‘for life’ is particularly scary to hear because it implies that the Soviet idea of women being an important part of the work force is vanishing and the more traditional view is taking over.
