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Project name: Innovations for Women’s Empowerment: A workable model for women in Turkey’s Southeast Anatolia Region
Budget: USD 907.360
Timeline: March 2008-March 2011
What's the situation?
Despite Turkey’s remarkable economic growth as a Middle Income Country (MIC), the basic development indicators for women are far behind comparable MICs and much further behind the new EU member states. The situation of women in especially in the country’s east and southeast regions is such that it seriously impacts the full enjoyment of their human rights. Despite Turkey’s reformed legal framework protecting the rights of women, these reforms are either not fully implemented or not relevant to the daily lives of women, especially in the country’s east and southeast.
2004 National Human Development Report for Turkey shows that the provinces of Southeastern Anatolia (with the exception of Gaziantep and Kilis which are located in western part of the region) are ranked among the lowest 20 provinces in terms of human development. Similarly, the same report also states that the gender-based human development ranking of Diyarbakir, Batman, Mardin, Siirt, Gaziantep and Kilis are even worse than their human development indicators.
In the Southeast Anatolia Region, women’s participation in paid labor is an alarming 3.72 %, compared to 19.9% in Turkey which is already very low compared to EU and other middle income countries. The agricultural labor force is predominantly female. The region’s economy is not growing fast enough to create employment opportunities for women nor men.
Finally, Southeastern Anatolia Region suffers from a set of market integration challenges that further constrain the opportunities for women’s advancement. Among these is also the association of the region with negative events and developments such as social tension. UNDP’s current work in the economic sectors points at the need to “reverse” the image of the region from negative to positive connotations.
What's UNDP’s mission?
UNDP is working in partnership with a longstanding program of the Turkish Government. The Government of Turkey developed the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) in the 1989 as a project to support the region's economic advancement. The project itself is an irrigation and energy production project, which involves building dams and irrigation channels to support agriculture in the region.
UNDP Turkey has been working in partnership with the GAP Regional Development Agency (GAP RDA) since 1996 in support of Turkey’s ambitious GAP Project. Its aim is to complement the GAP by focusing on socioeconomic development, directly targeting the people of the region - an aspect not covered in the original GAP project.
This project aims at women’s empowerment in Southeast Anatolia in social and economic life through innovative production-marketing related strategies and re-branding. This aim is planned to be pursued through a multi-dimensional approach focusing on enhancing institutional capacities and women’s labour market participation, branding of the Southeast Anatolia and developing new sales and marketing opportunities.
How is UNDP doing this?
The project is a women’s empowerment initiative as well as an institutional capacity intervention that builds on policy analysis conducted by the United Nations, UNDP, and the national and international civil society as well as local level programming experience.
The implementation strategy is premised on women’s empowerment and institutional capacity development targeting women’s own capacity to associate and network for income generation purposes. This will be done by financial and technical assistance support to production workshops and ateliers managed by women and for women. In particular, financial support will be in the form of supply of small machinery and material for women managed workshops to produce goods for national and local markets. Technical assistance will focus on design elements that will add to the marketability of the goods. The association model for the workshops is generally in the form of cooperatives. Cooperatives will also receive technical support in strengthening their internal governance structures.
The project will have a branding externality as well whereby project activities will emphasize the strength of the region: its people, their diversity and the efforts of the women to link their culture and intangible assets to global knowledge and commercial markets. The goods produced by these women owned enterprises will be marketed with a visibility program which will link the creativity of the women of the southeast to fashion designers and their work in Istanbul and elsewhere in Turkey.
Lessons learned from earlier programming of UNDP with the GAP RDA as well as analytical studies show that increasing women’s entrepreneurship in Southeastern Anatolia needs to be reinforced through national policies. National policies for women’s employment are required to overcome the structural challenges (socio-economic barriers, lack of education, lack of business experience, unequal access to finance and other means of production, etc.) that keep women out of paid employment opportunities including self-owned enterprises. (Özar, Women’s Entrepreneurship in GAP Region, UNDP).
Who are our partners?
The project will be executed by GAP Regional Development Administration with financial support of Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and technical assistance provided by UNDP Turkey.
GAP Regional Development Administration (www.gap.gov.tr)
Sida (http://www.sida.org/sida/jsp/sida.jsp?d=121&language=en_US)
How will Turkey benefit?
This project will bring an integrated approach to women’s empowerment in both social and economic life.
The project will help better the image of the Southeastern Anatolia region through re-branding the region with the creativity and productivity of women. As such the project complements the Southeast Anatolia regional competitiveness agenda, supported by UNDP and the GAP Action Plan announced by the Government of Turkey in May 2008 (www.gap.gov.tr)
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