Originally published on ADB Avenue, 29 March 2017

Unsung gender equality hero: Raushan Mamatkulov

We honor Asian Development Bank (ADB)s unsung gender equality heroes. They went the
extra mile to change womens lives through their work in development projects. Raushan
shares how focusing on women creates more value in ADB projects.

Why do you work for gender equality in your projects?

I believe that achieving gender equality in ADB-funded projects is important and can
bring value to the projects. In particular, I truly liked the outcome of an ADB-funded
grant in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,
the Turpan Womens Ethnic Minority Cultural
Tourism Development Project. The grant
received funding from the Gender and
Development Cooperation Fund and focused on
developing capacity of and helping develop small
businesses by women in Turpan.

As a result of the grant, a whole group of women,

who were the main breadwinners in their
families, learned new business skills, received
small investments from the grant funds to kick-
start or expand their small businesses, and substantially increased their household
income. This grant empowered women by teaching them new business development
and management skills, allowing them to sustain their families and thereby giving
more opportunities to members of their families. The post-project feedback we
received from the project beneficiaries was extremely positive.

Another example of a project where gender equality is expected to add value is the
disability project that we have been processing in Mongolia. The survey data showed
that majority of the caretakers of the persons with disabilities (PWDs) and children
with disabilities (CWDs) are women. They are the ones who shoulder the huge
burden of care and have to sacrifice their careers, income, and social life. The project
that we are developing will help the PWDs acquire training, acquire professional skills,
and access the labor markets and become active members in the society.
What challenges do you face in pushing for gender equality?

In general, our project stakeholders, including government officials, project

beneficiaries, and others do understand importance of gender equality. Open
discussions substantiated by facts and data create a good basis for convincing our
client governments and other stakeholders of how important it is to focus on gender
equality issues along with focusing on the other project components.

For the first time in 7 years we will be unlikely to meet our 45%-at-entry
gender mainstreaming in operations target in 2016. What is your view on
this?

My personal belief is that ADB should expand its gender mainstreaming work on a
policy level and continue its efforts on the project level. Along with our work on the
project level, we should continue working more with the client governments on
legislative and policy development and enforcement. As the economies of our client
countries grow, the policy level work will bring great value in addition to one from the
project based gender components. For instance, we could work with the parliaments
and governments to ensure gender equality in the government agencies, parliaments,
legislative bodies, and other government bodies.

Raushan Mamatkulov is Senior Health Specialist in ADBs Mongolia Resident Mission.

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