Montenegro, in all its beauty in Northern mountainous areas can be a very hard place to live, especially for women. Gender inequality in this region is a result of deeply rooted social norms and believes.
Women bear a significant amount of the workload in rural areas often without remuneration. In rural areas, households typically are quite large. In addition to regular household activities such as preparing meals, taking care of the children and cleaning the house, commitments to farming activities are equally important. Women's days begin well before sunrise and end late after the sundown. The difference in the distribution of family and household responsibilities between men and women largely cause all the other differences between them: different opportunities in the labor market, different positions in society, discrimination of power, work in managerial positions and the possibility of self- promotion. On top of that, there is an uneven power distribution of women and men when it comes to owning a property. In fact, land ownership is usually controlled by men and most women relinquish their share of inheritance in favor of a male offspring.
Women are increasingly becoming aware of that something should change. Improving the position of women in rural areas is gaining more and attention from relevant state institutions and the non-governmental sector. Recently, there have been many initiatives in Montenegro to empower women in rural areas.
In this context, the IFAD funded Rural Clustering and Transformation Project (RCTP) uses a gender transformative approach to empower women economically, reduce their workloads and to encourage equality in decision-making processes in political and public life.
Anka Popović’ lives in Šavnik municipality, in a rural area of Montenegro. The main activity of all family members and their sole source of income is agriculture. While her husband was alive, she was mostly doing household and family work, as well as easier field work. After his death, she had to take on all the responsibilities, as well as take care of her three sons. Anka does many physical jobs that few women would be able to endure, she has to feed cows and poultry, clean barns, milk cows and makes cheese. In the meantime she is also responsible for the housework such as washing, cleaning, preparing food. She usually goes into the woods and picks blueberries, of which she produces juice and jam. Together with homemade cheeses, she sells them at the main road which is 30 minutes from her home. She physically carries the products there. Although the sons plow and fertilize the land, Anka plants, weeds and harvests the produce. The family purchases supplies that they cannot produce, such as flour, oil, salt, sugar on the market. This requires a great deal of physical effort as well as good planning.
In addition to that, her sons are not permanently employed, so depending on the time of year and opportunity, they go and work for the day-to-day wages, which puts Mrs. Anka in extra work.
For exmple, Anka's sons are in charge of cutting grass, preparing wood and bringing it home. When they are working this activity also falls on Anka's shoulder. To cut grass, the family uses an old –second hand- mower. Working with this outdated piece of equipment is time consuming and physically demanding. Rain can delay the work and spoil the quality of the hay. Climate changes exacerbates the situation as it become more difficult to predict the weather forecast and plans the harvest accordingly. Given this, it is evident that reducing Anka’s workload is a priority.
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RCTP deployed the GALS methodology in the household. The project organised multiple workshops where Anka was asked to clearly summarize what she was doing on a daily basis. Also, the project asked Anka about her aspirations and what were the constrains not allowing her to achieve her life objectives. The various workshops, allowed her to reflect deeper on what she wants to achieve in her life. But also, the workshops provided her with convincing tools and other methods in order to start a dialogue with other household members about workload distribution. Anka's sons were suprised to see how much physically work Anka is involved in. After the workshop, Anka felt confident and she and her sons talked about the distribution of work in the household. As Anka also indicated that she wanted to take a bit more time to herself, they started to redistribute some tasks. For example, Anka's sons indicated that they will support her with selling the jams and cheeses she produced. Namely, they will strive to schedule appointments so that at the time Anka carries the products on the road to customers, they will be there and take over the activity. They will also help Anka feed the cows and clean the barns, so that Anka can take more time to herself. The sons will also help to collect vegetable products.
An additional benefit was that with support from the RCTP public call, the family was able to procure a grass collecting machine, which had a significant impact on their lives. First, Instead of spending hours on mowing and collecting grass, the now they manage to cut and collect the grass within a couple of hours. Consequently, the family members have way more time to spent on other activities. Second, as the household has plenty of meadonws and there is less spoilage, the family is able to produce surplus which is sold to third parties. Third, Anka's sons plan to rent out the machinery to their village neighbors. This will provide them with additional resources to then rent machinary to faciliate the work in other farming activities such as the collection of vegetables.
The plan for monitoring the realization of the above is planned through a continuous visiting of the household with the help of partners from the Agribusiness Center, Municipality of Savnik, with whom we are in daily contact. We will also talk to household members in order to see if things have really changed and whether her sons "keep their word" to what has been said and to what extent.
In fact, thanks to the Rural Clustering and Transformation Project (RCTP) project, other opportunities were provided to Anka, between them the possibility of strengthen her voice and participation in decision-making processes. For example, although she has always been involved in agriculture, Anka did not have a registered agricultural holding with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Montenegro. Attending workshops held by RCTP implementation unit in the municipality of Šavnik, she learned about the benefits and opportunities that RCTP project gives to semi-substance farmers. Through the project activities, she was supported to procure machinery for collecting grass, , which significantly reduces her workload, saved her time, money and made her climate resilient, which allows Anka to have more free time to devote to herself.
Finally, she decided to register the household and to be the head of it. So far, Anka had never had the opportunity to be the beneficiary of this kind of help and support, and she is immensely grateful for the support she has been given. She improved her agricultural skills through trainings conducted by the RCTP team in collaboration with experts. The project’s dairy experts were primarily concerned with the quality and hygiene of milk. Hence, RCTP learned how to apply hygiene standards when using traditional milk processing techniques.
In 2020, Anka took initiative and applied for the support to purchase one more cow. Her plan is to expand and increase production. Now her workload has been significantly reduced due to machinery, and acquiring one more cow would not change much, as household work is very well distributed now. Her two out of three sons plan to stay in the countryside and farm.
The benefits are great - they plan their time for themselves, work for themselves and their family, and they have no stress. They plan to follow their mother’s example and improve their family production, keeping on to the traditional processing and customs, with respect to a newly built household work distribution.
Women bear a significant amount of the workload in rural areas often without remuneration. In rural areas, households typically are quite large. In addition to regular household activities such as preparing meals, taking care of the children and cleaning the house, commitments to farming activities are equally important. Women's days begin well before sunrise and end late after the sundown. The difference in the distribution of family and household responsibilities between men and women largely cause all the other differences between them: different opportunities in the labor market, different positions in society, discrimination of power, work in managerial positions and the possibility of self- promotion. On top of that, there is an uneven power distribution of women and men when it comes to owning a property. In fact, land ownership is usually controlled by men and most women relinquish their share of inheritance in favor of a male offspring.
Women are increasingly becoming aware of that something should change. Improving the position of women in rural areas is gaining more and attention from relevant state institutions and the non-governmental sector. Recently, there have been many initiatives in Montenegro to empower women in rural areas.
In this context, the IFAD funded Rural Clustering and Transformation Project (RCTP) uses a gender transformative approach to empower women economically, reduce their workloads and to encourage equality in decision-making processes in political and public life.
Anka Popović’ lives in Šavnik municipality, in a rural area of Montenegro. The main activity of all family members and their sole source of income is agriculture. While her husband was alive, she was mostly doing household and family work, as well as easier field work. After his death, she had to take on all the responsibilities, as well as take care of her three sons. Anka does many physical jobs that few women would be able to endure, she has to feed cows and poultry, clean barns, milk cows and makes cheese. In the meantime she is also responsible for the housework such as washing, cleaning, preparing food. She usually goes into the woods and picks blueberries, of which she produces juice and jam. Together with homemade cheeses, she sells them at the main road which is 30 minutes from her home. She physically carries the products there. Although the sons plow and fertilize the land, Anka plants, weeds and harvests the produce. The family purchases supplies that they cannot produce, such as flour, oil, salt, sugar on the market. This requires a great deal of physical effort as well as good planning.
In addition to that, her sons are not permanently employed, so depending on the time of year and opportunity, they go and work for the day-to-day wages, which puts Mrs. Anka in extra work.
For exmple, Anka's sons are in charge of cutting grass, preparing wood and bringing it home. When they are working this activity also falls on Anka's shoulder. To cut grass, the family uses an old –second hand- mower. Working with this outdated piece of equipment is time consuming and physically demanding. Rain can delay the work and spoil the quality of the hay. Climate changes exacerbates the situation as it become more difficult to predict the weather forecast and plans the harvest accordingly. Given this, it is evident that reducing Anka’s workload is a priority.
RCTP deployed the GALS methodology in the household. The project organised multiple workshops where Anka was asked to clearly summarize what she was doing on a daily basis. Also, the project asked Anka about her aspirations and what were the constrains not allowing her to achieve her life objectives. The various workshops, allowed her to reflect deeper on what she wants to achieve in her life. But also, the workshops provided her with convincing tools and other methods in order to start a dialogue with other household members about workload distribution. Anka's sons were suprised to see how much physically work Anka is involved in. After the workshop, Anka felt confident and she and her sons talked about the distribution of work in the household. As Anka also indicated that she wanted to take a bit more time to herself, they started to redistribute some tasks. For example, Anka's sons indicated that they will support her with selling the jams and cheeses she produced. Namely, they will strive to schedule appointments so that at the time Anka carries the products on the road to customers, they will be there and take over the activity. They will also help Anka feed the cows and clean the barns, so that Anka can take more time to herself. The sons will also help to collect vegetable products.
An additional benefit was that with support from the RCTP public call, the family was able to procure a grass collecting machine, which had a significant impact on their lives. First, Instead of spending hours on mowing and collecting grass, the now they manage to cut and collect the grass within a couple of hours. Consequently, the family members have way more time to spent on other activities. Second, as the household has plenty of meadonws and there is less spoilage, the family is able to produce surplus which is sold to third parties. Third, Anka's sons plan to rent out the machinery to their village neighbors. This will provide them with additional resources to then rent machinary to faciliate the work in other farming activities such as the collection of vegetables.
The plan for monitoring the realization of the above is planned through a continuous visiting of the household with the help of partners from the Agribusiness Center, Municipality of Savnik, with whom we are in daily contact. We will also talk to household members in order to see if things have really changed and whether her sons "keep their word" to what has been said and to what extent.
In fact, thanks to the Rural Clustering and Transformation Project (RCTP) project, other opportunities were provided to Anka, between them the possibility of strengthen her voice and participation in decision-making processes. For example, although she has always been involved in agriculture, Anka did not have a registered agricultural holding with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Montenegro. Attending workshops held by RCTP implementation unit in the municipality of Šavnik, she learned about the benefits and opportunities that RCTP project gives to semi-substance farmers. Through the project activities, she was supported to procure machinery for collecting grass, , which significantly reduces her workload, saved her time, money and made her climate resilient, which allows Anka to have more free time to devote to herself.
Finally, she decided to register the household and to be the head of it. So far, Anka had never had the opportunity to be the beneficiary of this kind of help and support, and she is immensely grateful for the support she has been given. She improved her agricultural skills through trainings conducted by the RCTP team in collaboration with experts. The project’s dairy experts were primarily concerned with the quality and hygiene of milk. Hence, RCTP learned how to apply hygiene standards when using traditional milk processing techniques.
In 2020, Anka took initiative and applied for the support to purchase one more cow. Her plan is to expand and increase production. Now her workload has been significantly reduced due to machinery, and acquiring one more cow would not change much, as household work is very well distributed now. Her two out of three sons plan to stay in the countryside and farm.
The benefits are great - they plan their time for themselves, work for themselves and their family, and they have no stress. They plan to follow their mother’s example and improve their family production, keeping on to the traditional processing and customs, with respect to a newly built household work distribution.