Civil society representatives and young researchers present studies on gender equality

UN Women in Georgia continues its work to improve gender statistics. Alongside other areas of engagement, this work includes supporting the collection of comprehensive, high-quality data to ensure that projects, strategies and policies take into account the needs of all women and girls and that decision-making is gender-responsive.

One of the key initiatives in this area was the joint project between UN Women and CRRC-Georgia, “Strengthening Gender Data Analysis Skills of Civil Society Organizations and Researchers”. Within the framework of the initiative, around 40 representatives of civil society and academia strengthened their capacity on how to collect and analyse gender data. Among them, 11 project participants also received funding and the support of experienced mentors to carry out research projects on gender equality. On 18 and 19 November, the authors presented the findings of these studies at a workshop.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the findings of the studies, promote dialogue and knowledge exchange among civil society organizations and academia, and explore prospects for future cooperation.

Ana Pachikashvili, head of the Kakheti-based organization “Georgian Udis”, conducted research on the invisible labour of ethnic Avar women, examining the issue in the context of men’s migration. The Avar community is particularly isolated: Their voices are scarcely heard at either the local or central level, which further underscores the importance of the research.

“I discovered that women living just two kilometres apart are engaged in entirely different and demanding forms of labour,” Ana noted. “This is compounded by ethnic and cultural factors that further intensify their living conditions. People [such as myself] who work in small community-based organizations often lack research-related knowledge and sometimes have to feel our way in the dark in order to reach those who truly need support.” Ana added that the challenges identified through this research will enable her to define more concrete objectives for future work.

Notably, as in Ana’s case, the information provided through trainings and research will also help other civil society representatives to conduct small-scale studies themselves, identify community needs that are often invisible, and plan appropriate initiatives.

Participation in the project also proved valuable for young researchers, who reanalysed data from the Georgia Time Use Survey conducted by UN Women and Geostat in 2020–2021 and examined aspects of gender inequality such as the distribution of time spent on unpaid care work, rest and leisure within households.

One such researcher was Natia Sordia, Assistant Professor at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. Her paper, developed within the framework of the project, will be published in the near future and made available to a wider audience. She remarked during the meeting: “My research focused on differences between women and men in their use of free time. Since unpaid care work in Georgia is predominantly carried out by women, it was interesting to see whether similar trends would be reflected in the use of leisure time. The study showed that a difference does exist: On average, men have 80 more minutes per day for rest than women. Without the Time Use Survey and its scale, I would not have been able to [conduct] this type of data collection independently.”

The initiative was implemented within the framework of the project “Women’s Increased Leadership for Democracy in Georgia” (WILD), implemented with the generous financial support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the UN Women global flagship programme Making Every Woman and Girl Count.