Gender and environment and energy in Europe & CIS

Women's committees and empowerment in Uzbekistan

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Uzbekistan, 22 May 2008 – UNDP last week conducted a training course for members of regional women’s committees from across Uzbekistan. The course was focused on the use of CEDAW to address gender gaps and discrimination and is the latest UNDP activity in the country to strengthen the mechanisms for women’s participation and work toward gender equality.

The Women’s Committee of Uzbekistan (WOMC) was set up in 1991, and has branches across the country. It exists to promote the constitutional and social rights of women in Uzbekistan, including activities to raise awareness of the mechanisms for protection of women’s rights. WOMC often cooperates with members of the UN system, including with UNICEF on family education and UNFPA on maternal well-being. UNDP works with the Women’s Committee on women’s empowerment, through the joint national project “Legislative and Institutional Capacity Development for Women’s Empowerment in Uzbekistan.”

Uzbekistan has twice reported to CEDAW since 1995, and will present its next report in August 2008. Following the last report, in 2006, the CEDAW Committee praised the government for amendments to the electoral law and for achieving gender parity in primary and secondary education (also a national target under Millennium Development Goal 3). The CEDAW Committee also expressed concern in several areas, including: slow legislative reforms relating to gender equliaty; obstacles to financing for the women’s non-governmental sector; persistent patriarchal attitudes and cultural stereotypes; and insufficient institutional status of the WOMC, meaning it has less influence on government bodies than it should. 

Khilola Badriddinova, education and training specialist of the Women’s Empowerment project, said: “The representatives of Women’s Committee, Hokimiyats and Makhalla committees work with people in all regions and it is important to enhance their knowledge on international and national mechanisms on protection of women’s rights. We hope that the participants will contribute to improvement of women’s rights protection in their localities.” 

It is hoped that continuing support to build the capacity of the Women’s Committee will make it an increasingly central institution in government policy-making, overcoming current problems of underfunding and understaffing. Such higher status would also encourage the mainstreaming of gender issues into the work of all ministries. 

Another aspect of the UNDP project is capacity building for national statistical bodies, particularly with the goal of having sex-disaggregated data. The statistical bulletin “Women and Men of Uzbekistan” is published regularly with the support of UNDP and other international organizations. Moreover, with UN support, a publication giving a detailed overview of gender indicators (among others) will be published soon in the context of meeting the Millennium Development Goals: System of indicators for monitoring and evaluation of achievement of MDGs in Uzbekistan. This should help address a further CEDAW concern over the lack of reliable data in areas such as the informal labour market.

See the UNDP project page for Legislative and Institutional Capacity Development for Women’s Empowerment in Uzbekistan.

See the UNDP project page for Promotion of the Rights of Women Migrant Workers.

See the project page for Statistical Capacity Building and MDG Monitoring.

See the Women's Committee of Uzbekistan page for more information.

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