White Gold Or Women's Grief the Gendered Cotton
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‘White Gold’ or Women’s Grief? The Gendered Cotton of Tajikistan – Oxfam GB October 2005 I. xecutive ummary 1 E S kept in the dark concerning their labour rights Contrary to dominant institutional and land rights; rural communities are not belief, cotton in Tajikistan, especially given its given any details about the extend of the farm present production structure, is not a cotton debt (estimated on a whole to have ‘strategic’ commodity; is highly inequitable in surpassed US$280 million by July 2005); for its distribution of financial gains in favour of nearly all female cotton workers, major investors rather than the majority-female farm incentives to work is the opportunity to collect workers; exploits the well-being and labour the meagre cotton picking earnings (about rights of children and rural households; leads US$0.03/kg) and the reward of collecting the ghuzapoya to rampant indebtedness of farms; induces end-of-season dried cotton stalks ( ) food insecurity, hunger, and poverty; is used as fuel, bartered or sold; the conditions socially destructive, causing widespread of many farms and farm workers is not unlike migration and dislocation of families; damages ‘bonded labour’ and ‘financial servitude’; not the micro and macro environments, cotton is thus a strategic commodity for contradicting principles of sustainable Tajikistan nor is it a ‘cash crop’ for rural economic development; and if not mitigated women and their households, with the crop of will likely lead to social and economic choice for the far majority being food crops aggravations. such as wheat, corn, potatoes and vegetables. A rapid qualitative study was con- The following advocacy and program- ducted during a three week period in March ming recommendations are presented to and April 2005 in the southern Khatlon Oxfam GB on the issue of gender and cotton province of Tajikistan and the capital city, production in Tajikistan. Recommendations Dushanbe. The research entailed interviews for advocacy: 1) End the de facto cotton (n>25) with experts (NGOs, IOs, government quota; 2) Increase farm minimum wage closer officials on national, province, district, jamoat to a living wage; 3) Promote democratic rule and village levels), case studies (n=12) of of farms; 4) Assist in nullifying farm cotton female cotton farmers, focus groups (n=5) debt; and 5) provide agricultural loans directly involving rural women in cotton growing to farmers. Recommendations for communities in both the Kulob and Qurghon- programming: 6) Assist rural women-headed dehqon teppa zones of Khatlon province, and the households in acquiring private review of relevant literature. (‘peasant’) farms; 7) Expand and strengthen village community based organizations The major findings and confirmations (CBOs); 8) Facilitate participation of rural of the study are: The far majority of cotton women in non-cotton economic activities; 9) farm workers in Tajikistan are women Set stage for production and marketing of (estimated at 300,000-plus); the massive organic and/or fair trade Tajik cotton and economic migration of the mostly rural male products; 10) Promote women’s rights population of Tajikistan to primarily Russia training for women and men; 11) Develop (estimated at 700,000) has substantially education fund for both sexes with focus on increased the number of female-headed rural girls and women; 12) Enlighten public of households in Tajikistan; land reform is cotton-consuming countries; 13) Establish corrupted and gender unfriendly; the majority women’s environmental clubs in cotton- of rural households lack land-use and farm- growing regions; 14) Generate income and share certificates; nearly no property is in the solar energy for and by rural women; 15) Co- name of women; local authorities regularly sponsor international forum on ‘Human bypass women when making decisions on land Security and National Security in Transitional reform and farming; women are generally States’; 16) Establish a ‘development radio’ in Khatlon; and 17) Co-sponsor the 2006 1 The views expressed in this report are of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Oxfam GB. Livelihood Survey of Women, Households, and Farms in Tajikistan (n=1,000-1,500). - 1 - ‘White Gold’ or Women’s Grief? The Gendered Cotton of Tajikistan – Oxfam GB October 2005 Page 1 I. Executive Summary 3 II . Introduction 12 III . Research Problem 13 IV . Research Questions 14 V. Methodology 17 VI . Analysis & Findings 20 VII . Recommendations 28 VIII . Conclusions 30 Appendices: 30 Case Studies 47 Interview Questions 48 Map of Tajikistan - 2 - ‘White Gold’ or Women’s Grief? The Gendered Cotton of Tajikistan – Oxfam GB October 2005 II. Introduction current mode of cotton production in Central Asia to “political repression, economic stagnation, widespread poverty and environ- 3 “To tell Tajik farmers not to grow mental degradation”. That description is not far away from what is occurring with cotton is like telling a German: ‘Don’t Tajikistan and its cotton sector today. produce Mercedes Benz’!” 2 Despite the tongue-in-cheek nature of this remark by an Cotton cultivation is known to have existed in Central Asia for more than a international aid worker in Tajikistan, there 4 are some truths in it: Tajikistan and Germany millennium. Its production in Central Asia both generate good amounts of foreign for export also goes back several hundred currency earnings from the export of cotton years. However, the level of production, using and Mercedes Benz (read ‘luxury vehicles’), modern irrigation techniques, only ballooned in the 20 th century after the takeover of the respectively. They both have been involved in th the production of the said commodities for region by the Bolsheviks. In the 19 century, many decades and have thus gained technical Imperial Russia had already noticed the expertise and what many assume as significance of Central Asia as a source of comparative advantage in cotton cultivation cotton when its imports of American cotton had been disrupted during the 1860s by the and luxury vehicle production, and naturally 5 feel, if anything, that an objective of their US civil war. Thus, from the very beginnings respective economies should be to generate of the Soviet Union, cotton was viewed by its higher and higher export earnings from these socialist planners as a strategic commodity in goods. that the expanding economy of the USSR demanded large supplies of it for civilian, Still, despite similarities, there are far state and military purposes. And in the too many differences in the above comparison. absence of sufficient domestic supplies, cotton Two main points of departure are that unlike would again have had to be imported from the Germany’s obsession with continuous mainly capitalist West, chiefly the US, at improvement of the end output of luxury exorbitant world prices. To counter such a vehicles, what appears to be its vying for scenario, Central Asia and to a lesser extent quality over quantity, Tajikistan’s cotton the Caucasus increasingly became the source industry has concentrated on quantity per se, of raw cotton for the Soviet Union. 6 with the goal seemingly being to maximize revenue from the production of more cotton, The cultivation of cotton in the still and in the process doing so at the expense of largely virgin territories of the southern tier taking precious land away from food crops. Soviet republics including Tajikistan was done via expansion of massive irrigation systems In line with the objective of within the Caspian Sea and Aral Sea maximizing export revenues, and as opposed watersheds in the early to mid part of the 20 th to Germany were workers’ rights are a cornerstone of business practices, Tajikistan’s generated wealth from the export of cotton 3 ICG, The Curse of Cotton: Central Asia’s Destructive fibre (one of its two major revenue earning Monoculture , Asia Report No. 93, February 28, 2005. export commodities, after aluminium), at least <www.icg.org>. 4 in its post-communist transition years, has not Kamoludin Abdullaev and Shahram Akbarzadeh, Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan , Asian/ Oceanian been benefiting the hundreds of thousands of Historical Dictionaries, No. 38, London: Scarecrow cotton workers —the majority being women, Press, 2002. around 300,000— who toil year-round by 5 Max Spoor, “Transition to market economies in former Soviet Central Asia: Dependency, cotton and water,” planting, nurturing, and harvesting the The European Journal of Development Research 5 (2) precious commodity. A recent report by the 142-58, December 1993. International Crisis Group (ICG) attributes the 6 The share of the total cotton production in the USSR in 1979 was: Uzbekistan 62.9%, Turkmenistan 13.3%, Tajikistan 9.8%, Azerbaijan 8.1%, Kazakhstan 3.6%, 2 Meeting with Mr Adam Vinaman Yao, German Agro and Kyrgyzstan 2.3% (K. Abdullaev and S. Akbarzadeh, Action (GAA), Dushanbe, March 16, 2005. Historical Dictionary of Tajikistan … op. cit. ). - 3 - ‘White Gold’ or Women’s Grief? The Gendered Cotton of Tajikistan – Oxfam GB October 2005 century. By then, cotton production under the (GOT) and the Islamist-dominated opposition. Soviets had thus taken industrial proportions Since then, the macroeconomy has seen and transformed the local economies of impressive growth rates; the average annual Central Asian states, including Tajikistan, and growth in the gross domestic product (GDP) supplied the rest of the USSR with a highly was equivalent to nearly 10% during the five desired raw material, which since the Soviet year period 2000-2004. That said, the era, has often been referred to as ‘white gold’. economic dip which Tajikistan encountered, Similar to the Soviet years, the leaders hitting near rock bottom in the mid-1990s, as of the post-communist transitional cotton results of the three blows of Soviet producing states of Central Asia have disintegration, independence and civil war, continued to regard cotton as a critical element has made the economic recovery extremely of their respective national economies.