US Fed News
April 1, 2013 Monday 9:58 PM EST
PARTNERSHIP TO ADVANCE GENDER EQUALITY, WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP IN ARMENIA
TEMPE, Ariz., April 1 — Arizona State University issued the following
press release:
Arizona State University is one of five universities in the United
States selected to participate in the new Women’s Leadership Program
announced March 21 by the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) and Higher Education for Development (HED).
Each university will partner with a higher education institution in
Armenia, Paraguay, Rwanda or South Sudan to promote gender equality
and female empowerment. (Official press release here.)
With funding from USAID totaling approximately $8.75 million, these
critical higher education partnerships will promote and develop
curricula and opportunities for women in business, agriculture and
education in the targeted countries, thus supporting key national and
local development goals aimed at fostering the advancement of women
and girls.
In addition to Arizona State, the partnering U.S. universities are
Indiana University, Michigan State University, the University of
Florida, and the University of California Los Angeles.
ASU’s component of the program, funded by a $1.3 million award to
the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Melikian Center: Russian,
Eurasian and East European Studies, leverages a decade of partnerships
between ASU and Yerevan State University (YSU) in Armenia.
The award will establish a Center for Gender and Leadership Studies
at YSU that will develop new curriculum in women and gender studies,
promote career advancement for women university graduates, conduct
outreach activities, and advance public policy research on issues
related to gender equality and women’s leadership.
Over the course of the three-year partnership, eight YSU scholars in
areas related to women’s studies will be in-residence in ASU’s women
and gender studies program within the School of Social Transformation
to participate in courses and develop syllabi and action-oriented
research goals. The scholars also will be engaged in courses in the
School of Public Affairs. The first cohort of scholars will arrive
for ASU’s Fall 2013 semester.
ASU’s partnership director is Victor Agadjanian, the E.E. Guillot
International Distinguished Professor in the T. Denny Sanford School of
Social and Family Dynamics. A speaker of Eastern Armenian, Agadjanian
has done pioneering research on social change in the former Soviet
Union – including rural Armenia – and serves on the graduate faculty
for the gender studies doctoral program at ASU.
Mary Margaret Fonow, co-director, is a professor of women and
gender studies, director of the School of Social Transformation,
and an internationally recognized scholar on women’s leadership and
labor issues.
Stephen Batalden, co-director, is the Melikian Center director and an
authority on Eurasian cultural history, the newly independent states
of Eurasia, and the religious and cultural history of modern Russia.
Alexander Markarov, the YSU deputy vice rector and head of the YSU
International Cooperation Office, has served as principal investigator
on other ASU-YSU grant partnerships and will serve as YSU’s partnership
director for this program.
Batalden says that the partnership goals are very much inspired by
the vision of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for
successful development, articulated in USAID’s Gender Equality and
Female Empowerment policy released in March 2012.
“A hallmark of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State was policies
recognizing that long-term peace and prosperity around the world are
possible only when women and men enjoy equal opportunity to reach their
potential,” he notes. “Since being folded into the State Department,
USAID’s new policies on gender equality and female empowerment
emphasize building high-impact partnerships, harnessing innovation,
and conducting rigorous program evaluation.
“In each of these regards, the partnership really is a made-for-ASU
kind of effort, bringing a lot of innovation and cross-disciplinary
expertise to the table,” says Batalden.
In October, professors Agadjanian, Batalden and Fonow visited Yerevan
State to conduct a needs assessment. The partnership leadership team
convened at ASU in January, including Gohar Shahnazaryan, associate
professor of sociology at YSU and founding director of the Women’s
Resource Center of Armenia – the largest NGO serving young women
in post-Soviet Armenia and an important community partner in the
new grant project. Shahnazaryan was also recently named director of
the new Center for Gender and Leadership Studies at YSU, which will
celebrate its official launch on May 7.
“Gohar Shahnazaryan has done wonderful work to establish and grow
this NGO, and we’re delighted she has taken on the center directorship
at Yerevan State,” says Fonow. “They are doing important advocacy in
Armenia and the region in educating, organizing and mobilizing people
around gender issues and violence against women.
“Reducing gender-based inequities locally, nationally and
internationally informs our scholarship and teaching in women and
gender studies at ASU, and we appreciate that this partnership will
also bring insights to our own faculty and students,” she notes.
More than a third of the partnership budget is allocated for
institutional capacity building at YSU. With 1.1 million residents,
the capital city of Yerevan is home to more than a third of Armenia’s
population, but the partnership will also support efforts to expand
women’s access to higher education and leadership mentoring in rural
communities.
Agadjanian says Armenia is a good social laboratory in the region
for developing innovative initiatives to benefit women economically,
politically and socially.
“Though Armenia is a fairly traditional, patriarchal society, it
is open enough to absorb new ideas, to try new social experiments,
if you will,” Agadjanian says.
“Like many post-Soviet societies, Armenia once saw quite a rapid
advancement of women under the Soviet system, as women joined the
labor force and pursued higher education on a large scale over a few
decades,” he says. “After Armenia’s independence in 1991, women’s
participation in household and community decision-making has also
been fueled by necessity. With many Armenian men having to migrate to
Russia for employment, women are taking responsibility for leadership
in their homes and communities.
“But these changes haven’t solved the fundamental problems of gender
inequality,” he explains. “And, in many ways, they have only added a
new burden to women as they’ve assumed additional roles beyond the
household duties without conditions being created to balance the
pursuit of family and professional goals.
“Our collaborators want to build on and complement this early impetus
with new models of empowerment for women that are compatible with local
traditions and culture – integrating what’s positive and constructive
(Armenia’s constitution, for example, includes specific protections
for family, motherhood and children) and taking that respect for family
and motherhood to a new level, by creating an environment where women
have a real choice about their lives and the same opportunities and
rewards that men enjoy.
“Of course, you can’t really change women’s lives unless you change
men,” Agadjanian emphasizes. “So this partnership will also be about
working with men – raising awareness about gender equality and getting
leaders in education and NGOs on board intellectually, psychologically
and culturally about the benefits of working on women’s leadership
and advancement issues.
“In the end,” says Agadjanian, “our comparative advantage
as a university-based initiative is our ability to help build
research-driven outreach and advocacy. The YSU faculty who come to
ASU for training will gain the understanding and practical skills
to go identify, study, analyze and produce recommendations and
interventions based on robust research to address concrete problems
facing their society.”
From: Baghdasarian