Tajikistan: Family Before Politics

When former parliamentarian Rano Samieva first proposed a law guaranteeing equal rights for Tajik women, reaction from her male colleagues was swift and hostile.

She was told bluntly that women should stay at home and listen to their husbands, not go out to work.

Four years later, the law was eventually passed, but analysts say little has changed and, despite constitutional guarantees promising equality between the sexes, Tajik women are still expected to put family and home before career.

“It is not in the traditions of Tajiks for women to work among men, and the few who have achieved high position are there for all to see - their behaviour, the way they dress and deport themselves; it’s all the subject of close and not always friendly attention,” said Munira Inoyatova, a former education minister.

Female politicians like Samieva have a particularly tough time. In the new parliament elected last February, 11 out of 63 deputies were women, around 17 per cent. That’s an improvement on the last parliament when 11 per cent of the legislature was female.

But political representation for women remains limited, since all those elected belong to the ruling People’s Democratic Party. Female candidates were fielded by the Communist Party and the Islamic Rebirth Party, but these won only a handful of seats.

Female candidates are treated with suspicion by voters, with the harshest criticism often coming from other women.

“I will not vote for a woman,” said Guldasta Karimova, a former teacher. “Women who want power are just looking for an easy life. They won’t do anything good for me personally.”

The situation for Tajik women in politics and the public sector has deteriorated in recent years. During the Soviet period, the government imposed a quota system, which said that 30 per cent of state employees must be women. With independence, and the reassertion of traditional values, these quotas were scrapped.

“As soon as the party and state mechanisms for selecting staff broke down… women began to be actively forced out of jobs. And this was seen even at the middle level, in those posts that had traditionally been occupied by women,” said parliamentary deputy Galia Rabieva, who served as senior advisor to the president on staffing policy from 1992-2005.

Samieva believes quotas for women need to be reinstated. “In a few years, I will stand for parliament again, and when I’m elected I will seek to introduce a 30 per cent quota for women in leadership posts at all levels,” she said.

However, it was not just the disappearance of quotas that made it more difficult for women to succeed in politics following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tajikistan’s independence was followed closely by the 1992-97 civil war, in which brute force was often the only consideration, and women tended to be pushed out from senior positions.

One woman who worked as a production manager at a major wine plant lost her job in the civil war years.

“Several people I didn’t know came into my office carrying guns and calmly suggested that I resign,” she said. “Working in a male team, I immediately realised that this was a real danger, and I did what they told me.”

This woman, who spoke to IWPR on condition of anonymity, has been unable to find another job in her profession, and now sells goods at a market in Dushanbe.

In recent years, the Tajik government has taken steps to reverse this trend.

In December 1999, President Imomali Rahmonov issued a decree making it obligatory for ministries, regional and city governments, courts and prosecutor’s offices, universities and other state institutions to employ at least one woman as deputy director.

After the decree, women’s share of positions of power at all levels increased on average from eight to 14 per cent. But this was not enough to effect a substantial shift in the status quo, and there are virtually no women in top positions.

All this makes women reluctant to put themselves forward as candidates. In a survey carried out by the non-government group Traditions and the Modern World, more than half the women interviewed said they would like to run for local councils, but around 12 per cent believed they would have no chance of being elected. Of those surveyed, 23 per cent expressed doubt that they could get support from voters.

Rabieva believes such “self-discrimination” goes back to the stereotype that persisted over many centuries that women were unfit for leadership.

Dilorom Haidarova of the OSCE centre for gender issues says such stereotypical views of women as mothers, wives and keepers of the home still dominate in Tajikistan.

“Frequently, women who are educated and have the right work experience and leadership capabilities face a choice presented by their husband, and sometimes his entire family - career or family. And in these situations, the woman almost always chooses family,” she said.

Valentina Kasymbekova is an IWPR contributor in Dushanbe.