The First Seven: Women Leadership in Tajikistan’s New Generation of Appraisers .

With the support of the Feed the Future Tajikistan Land Market Development Activity, the first women were hired for the Tajikistan’s Association of Independent Appraisers.

With only 7 percent of its territory arable, Tajikistan’s land is valuable. Although the country took steps to allow citizens to freely buy and sell rights to use the land, the lack of national appraisal standards and professional institutions to support their implementation made it difficult to determine how the land should be priced for exchange in an open market. To address this, the Feed the Future Tajikistan Land Market Development Activity helped to establish the country’s Association of Independent Appraisers, which brought together private sector entities involved in the profession. An issue remained, however: Despite a majority of Tajikistan’s agricultural land users being women, there were no female appraisers. With the project’s support, the association’s members actively recruited women as members.