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    UNFPA contributes to Turkmenistan study on married women: one in five banned from work

    1931

    The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan reports that Olaf Ronnie Lindstrom, Country Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), met with Deputy Minister Myahri Byashimova.

    The parties discussed "cooperation in the area of reproductive health, gender equality, and women's empowerment".

    Byashimova said she highly appreciates the UNFPA's work in helping to prepare a national sample survey on women's health and family status in Turkmenistan.

    The survey was conducted in Turkmenistan for the first time. About 3,000 women were interviewed in Ashgabat and in five regions of the country.

    The results showed that 41.1% of the respondents at least once in their lives encountered one type of controlling behavior from their husbands/partners.

    The survey showed that a common form of control is a ban on working or studying outside the home. Every fifth woman (20.7%) among the survey participants experienced a situation where her husband or partner forbade her to work or study if this meant she was outside the home.

    At the same time, restriction on a woman leaving the house, and her access to public space, is the most common form of control. It was experienced by 22.1% of the respondents.

    "This prohibition not only makes a woman more dependent and, consequently, more vulnerable to violence, but also significantly limits her ability to seek help and protection from the actions of an aggressor."

    Every eighth woman in Turkmenistan, married or in a relationship, has experienced domestic violence.

    The survey showed that compared to other regions in the Lebap region, the proportion of women reporting exposure to physical violence by a husband/partner at any time in their lives is the highest (17.1%). The second place in terms of the prevalence of physical violence is occupied by the Dashoguz region (12.4%). The value of this indicator in other regions varied from 7.3% in the Balkan region to 9.5% in the Ahal region.

    The level of the current violence is close to the results obtained in Kazakhstan (4.7%) and Armenia (4%), and significantly lower than the data identified in Kyrgyzstan (17.1%) and Tajikistan (19%).

    Credits: Eziz Boyarov, Ashgabat