Apparel industry making important MDG contribution in Kyrgyzstan
08/03/2013
Member of parliament Roza Aknazarova made the statement in a parliamentary session in early March. However, she warned that a punitive tax regime was forcing some garment manufacturing operations underground. “Once a sewing workshop increases, so does the tax rate,” she said, “and garment workers were forced to operate in the shadows.”
According to the CIA World Fact Book, one-third of Kyrgyzstan’s population of 5.5 million people were living in poverty in 2011. The apparel industry clearly has an important role to play in helping the economy, the second-weakest in central Asia, improve. But for it to employ so many women is especially important.
One of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight international development goals established by the United Nations in 2000, with all 193 United Nations member states agreeing to achieve them by 2015, specifically addresses this point. MDG 3 says countries should work to eliminate gender inequality, empower women and increase the number of women in “wage employment” (especially outside the agricultural sector).
It’s an accepted fact that employing women makes a strong contribution to improving the lot of poor people because, as the saying goes, to employ a man is to feed a man, whereas to employ a woman is to feed a family.
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