Covid-19, Rural Poverty, and Women’s Role in Decision-Making: Evidence from Khatlon Province in Tajikistan

The covid-19 pandemic has had devastating effects globally; it has caused health crises and economic recessions, leading unemployment to spike and disrupting food systems and supply chains. In the heavily remittance-dependent context of Tajikistan, however, migration has continued – and appears to have become increasingly dominated by men. In this context, what has happened to women’s perceptions of economic prospects, as well as the well-being of their households? How has women’s involvement in decision-making evolved? And to what extent do out-migration or in-migration of household members predict changes in women’s decision-making power? We consider these questions using a September – October 2020 phone survey deployed in Khatlon province, Tajikistan that successfully tracked 87% of households that had been surveyed in person in 2018. We find that both genders have similar expectations for their agricultural production (harvests), but women are slightly more likely to identify concerns with rising prices and a lack of access to financial services. Overall, we find little in the way of evidence that women’s involvement in intra-household decision-making declined as a result of the pandemic—though this is from a low base. However, we find that women are less likely than are men to report improvements in women’s decision-making authority. Further, we find that out-migration of household members, which is dominated by men, is associated with improvements in women’s decision-making power, particularly with respect to decisions about how to spend household income. Overall, our results point to the need for additional analyses of the gendered impacts of shocks on women in the Central Asia region.