Three years ago, when Aghunik Hazryan became the head of Aregnadem village, Amasia region of Shirak province she could never imagine as a woman she would have to prove she deserved the position, every signle day.

“It is part of Armenian mentality – a woman should not be a manager, she should raise children and stay in the kitchen. But I think it is not right: if the woman has the potential it needs to be used and I prove today I have the vigor,” says Hazryan, 44, who was re-elected village head this autumn. (Of Armenia’s 866 village heads only 23 are women, 2.5 percent.)

“Shall I call it a group or a type, of men, in the village, who do not accept I am their village head. They say ‘she is a good woman, she works very well, but she is a woman, she wears skirts.’ So I try not to wear skirts, try to have trousers on all the time.”

In trousers, she travels across the village, driving herself by car, meeting with residents.

“They would say about my driving car – ‘a woman has nothing to do with the steering wheel’, and stuff like this. Then they got used to it, and now the same men approach asking: ‘Aghun jan, will you take me’ to this place or the other.”

Unlike many others Hazryan has had an opportunity to move to both Gyumri and Yerevan, but instead settled down in Aregnadem – a village of 350 -- and attached herself to the village that she feels is her native land, like Gandza, the place she was born.

After the earthquake and as Azeri population left Aregnadem and other villages of Amasia, people from Akhalkalak (Georgia) gradually moved to the villages:

“I got married in March 1989 and moved here with my husband, because there were few opportunities for new families there,” she says. “My husband has always encouraged me saying the village will bloom if I become its head. I suppose I made up my mind because of him.”

Her rivals at both elections have been men. The first time she tried to convince the people showing that she wanted to do improve the sad state of the village, whereas the second time she proudly pointed to what she had done for the village and what else she would.

“The village was wrecked, there was no power or potential to restore it and because the first Armenian child born in this village was my first – Andranik, I decided to undertake the task of restoring the village,” says Hazryan believing a woman is more trustworthy and has more sense of responsibility.

Much has changed after she became the village head. Aregnadem is participating in various programs, has been subsidized by the state, financed and supported by various international and local organizations.

Besides, the medical outlet of the village has been furnished and equipped, the bridge connecting the eastern and the western parts of the village has been rebuilt: “The bridge was washed away by downpours and people, even the relatives, were unable to get to each other. They had to pass round the village, which was very hard and dangerous enterporise in winter time because of wolves.”

The major problem of the village is that people leave at the first opportunity they get. “It’s hard to provide a living here. My husband (like many others) is not in Armenia; he spends 8 months of the year in Russia and only the other 4 here. But it’s otherwise impossible, we want to create something for children,” says Hazryan concerned with the future of her three children.

And she is equally concerned with the village:

“The village has got the 5 million drams ($16,500) from the government that was distributed among those who farm and which was of great support to the people. We will soon also have the potholses on the roads filled and will help with repairing the water pipeline in one of the districts. All this has become possible owing to up to 70 percent collection of tax.”

Hazryan is confident she has been re-elected because she has been committed to her promises:

“There is one big issue remaining – that of the building of the secondary school, but that does not dependent on me. The government has to include it in its programs. I have even talked to a number of parliament members, and have also written to the Prime Minister who forwarded the letter to the Ministry of Territorial Admnistration. No response has followed yet.”

Hazryan, however, remains hopeful. And hard-working. “I sometimes sit up nights in front of the computer writing programs,” she says. “There have been cases when I have traveled to Yerevan, some 150 kilometers far from the village, and back twice in one day.

“It’s hard to combine family and work, because my work is not from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. It’s hard to be both woman, mother and daughter-in-law for an 84 year-old man and also be the village head,” she says. “But I don’t complain. I will do what I can.”