family is seen as sacred and protected by God, and
women are regarded as such an integral part of the
family that the Turkish word for family, aile, is
sometimes used to refer to a wife. However, the
position of women in the family and society varies
greatly and may seem both emancipatory and
restrictive, as it has historically been the target of
both progressive and traditional orientations. In
this entry, women’s intra-family status is consid-
ered within a sociohistorical context by examining
similarities and differences between Turkey and the
Caucasus.
One common element is that the states of both
the Turkish Republic and the former Soviet Union,
the two major sovereign sociopolitical powers
in the area, were involved in initiating changes in
women’s status, which was seen as pivotal to efforts
at modernization. In these secular polities women
were encouraged and given the opportunity to live
public lives, involving educational and occupa-
tional attainments.
Beyond this apparent similarity, however, the
role envisaged for women in the policies of these
two states has been radically different. In the
Caucasus, the reforms were seen as being imposed
by the ruling Soviet state, in order to benefit from
the economic potential of women’s labor. Edu-
cated, career-oriented women who in the public
realm symbolized Soviet emancipation were, in the
private realm of the family, expected to be the cus-
todians and perpetuators of religious and familial
traditions. At home the Islamic component of their
identity was an important marker of differentiation
from the Russians (Shami 2000). Caucasian women
had to reconcile the varied, and at times conflicting,
expectations of the Soviet state and their Muslim
communities. The assertive professional women of
the public realm resorted to docility and submis-
sion at home to protect their men’s sense of mas-
culinity in the quasi-colonial context of the Soviet
period (Tohidi 2000), and played a significant role
in providing religious education, and in resisting
the process of Russification (Heyat 2000, Shami
2000). Thus, the emphasis put on the persistence of
the traditional family (and the related patriarchal
values and religio-ethnic norms) entailed paradox-
ical gender implications: the family served as a buffer
against external pressures by offering support and
solidarity but it also functioned as a repressor
of women’s independence and personal growth.
Though some women expressed resentment, most
regarded the family as a “mixed blessing,” “the dar
al-Islamto be protected from the penetration of the
dominant ‘other’” (Tohidi 2000, 281).
In contrast, in Turkey, rather than being imposed166 family: modern islamic discourses
by an external ruling power, as in the Caucasus, the
well-educated, professional women prototype was
regarded as the building block of the new modern
outlook of the Turkish national republican identity.
This outlook was rooted in the nationalist ideolo-
gies going back to the modernization efforts of the
Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century (Jaya-
wardena 1986). The demands for women’s rights
had legitimacy according to the authentic national-
ist and religious traditions, that is, the original
Turkic roots, and “the tenets of pure Islam cleansed
of misinterpretations” (Minai 1981, 48); and many
laws and regulations were accepted to secure gen-
der equality in different domains of life.
Beliefs and traditions often tend to lag behind
legal changes, particularly in rural areas. Urban set-
tings respond more quickly. Today, in spite of cer-
tain difficulties, particularly concerning the slow
change in the role of the male, as well as problems
in maintaining relationships with the extended
families, Turkish urban families, on the whole,
seem to be moving in the direction of achieving a
state of cooperative interdependence based on rela-
tive egalitarianism, with increases in socioeconomic
development (Imamo(lu 2000). Age at marriage
and education play an important role in the emer-
gence of a modern outlook toward marriage and
family, especially for women. Better educated urban
women are more likely to marry husbands of their
own choice and at older ages, to contribute more as
breadwinners, and to participate more in family
decisions. Women’s power in the family tends to
increase with increases in their socioeconomic sta-
tus and modernism, whereas the more modern hus-
bands of higher socioeconomic status tend to wield
less power than the more traditional husbands of
lower socioeconomic status. Although the nuclear
family type is widely prevalent, ties with the ex-
tended family are often very close (Imamo(lu 2000).
The process of transformation of Turkish women’s
traditional roles has been interlocked with the pro-
cess of constructing a new progressive nation-state
and national identity in this Muslim society with a
secular state. Because the Islamic cultural heritage
has been regarded as an inseparable aspect of
Turkish nationalism, the modernization efforts of
the secular state toward becoming a part of the
international system have been, for the most part,
embraced by the great majority of the Turkish peo-
ple (Olson 1985), although religiosity still tends to
be generally associated with a more authoritarian
outlook and traditional attitudes toward gender
(Imamo(lu 1999).
In the Caucasus, although egalitarian gender
relations constituted an important aspect of the