The CaucasusThis entry deals mainly with Azerbaijan. This is
because of the shortage of relevant scholarship on
the rest of the Muslim Caucasus. In this region the
pre-Soviet religious prescriptions on the seclusion
of women reinforced the association between the
domestic and the feminine. In the wealthy urban
homes the gendered division of space confined
women to ichari ev(inner home). What survived
from this tradition in the Soviet era was the notion
that it is the husband/father’s duty to conduct the
household’s dealings with the outside world: shop-
ping (especially trips to a baker or a butcher), tak-
ing things for repair, even taking the garbage out,
were considered very much male tasks. It con-
firmed male prestige and a woman’s dignity, though
in practice women also participated in searching
for scarce goods and joining long queues (Heyat
2002b, 117).
Following the Soviet revolution state ideology
promoted the communalization of all housework
and childcare in order to free women from such
chores. But in later decades economic imperatives
and other factors led to the abandonment of such
utopian ideals. Instead, it was expected that women
be equal citizens, loyal workers, and devoted moth-
ers and wives who rather than rejecting family roles
fulfilled them perfectly well, taking pride in their
capacity to serve. Modernization and rationaliza-
tion of domesticity was advocated by the state and
Communist Party officials in the context of the
communalization of family life. But this only took
place in urban centers where canteens, wash
houses, nurseries, and kindergartens were estab-
lished. At the same time, the close association
between women and domesticity persisted under
the Soviet system, particularly in the rural regions.
In Daghestan, girls were taught cooking skills from
a very young age and by their teens were involved
in heavy domestic labor as well as arduous farm
work (Chenciner 1997).
In Azerbaijan, as elsewhere in the Soviet Union,
despite the increasing public roles assumed by
women, strong gender divisions of domestic labor
persisted. Culturally this was reflected in the close
association between the feminine and the domestic,
and its converse: the masculine and avoidance of
domestic chores. This is denoted by the way the
Domesticity
label aghabaji(effeminate master) is given to men
who involve themselves in housework, especially
cooking and cleaning. Washing clothes and dishes
are considered strictly female tasks. However, in
households where there were no daughters present,
because of difficulties of access to paid labor, sons
and husbands also participated.
In the Azeri culture domesticity is a highly valued
dimension of femininity (Heyat 2000a, 2002b).
Women’s domestic skills, evdarlik, are in fact cru-
cial to maintaining a high standard of hospitality,
gonakhparvarlik, in the form of generous offering
of food and great respect toward guests, gonakh.
This is reflected in the folklore and literature of
Azerbaijan as far back as the medieval epics of
Dede Korkut. It is also a source of ethnic pride
through which Azeris distinguish themselves from
the Russians and other Slavic and European peo-
ples (Tohidi 1996, 1998). As in the rest of Caucasus
and the Middle East, a tradition of hospitality still
remains an integral element in the system of honor
and prestige. In the later Soviet era, with a flourish-
ing alternative economy (Heyat 2002c), investment
in feasts became an important feature of maintain-
ing personal networks that facilitated access to
goods and services (Mars and Altman 1987). Given
that the work was done entirely by women in the
family, domestic skills of cooking and entertaining
were a matter of pride and prestige as well as a
necessity for women, including highly educated
professional women.
In the post-Soviet era, however, for the small sec-
tor of the new rich, women’s greater access to labor-
saving devices, the abundance of processed and
part-prepared food, and the development of the
catering industry, particularly in the major cities,
has reduced their domestic burden. Most women of
this class have assumed the role of full-time house-
wives. For those of the younger generation the
question of prestige is not based so much on their
domestic skills but their looks, maintaining slim,
fashionable figures, their knowledge of a Western
language, and travel to Europe or the United States
(Heyat 2002b, 185). Meanwhile, for the majority
of the population the drastic decline in income and
new poverty has entailed adopting survival strate-
gies such as subsistence farming, hand-crafting of
goods, petty trading, and provision of services that
draw on their domestic skills. In the foreseeable