of domestic labor, freeing their in-laws for ritual
work outside the household, which often involves
elaborate forms of reciprocal gift exchange, an
important source of wealth and authority within
the lineage and neighborhood. Thus while it may
appear that men dominate and control economic
life, women divert those resources toward the pro-
duction of their power and authority through family
ceremonies that require enormous outlays of cash.
Increasing male migration in relation to eco-
nomic liberalization in many regions of the conti-
nent has meant that women have become de facto
heads of households. They have used remittances
from male kin to shore up the household economy
and to engage in their own productive endeavors,
such as trading, and have diverted these earnings
into their ritual economies. In many communities
there is discourse concerning a crisis of social pro-
duction that is related to neoliberal reform. Men in
particular discuss their failure to constitute rela-
tions of kinship and alliance due to their prolonged
sojourns abroad and the absence of the kinds of
resources necessary to sustain these alliances.
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Beth Anne BuggenhagenTurkey and the CaucasusIn general, the domestic division of labor varies
with contextual factors such as the labor market
and industrial structure, and with household char-
acteristics such as family structure, social class,
income source, ethnicity, and relative factor en-
dowments of male versus female family members.
To identify patterns across the region, it is useful to
focus on the interplay between social norms and
everyday practices producing gendered definitions
of work. Social norms either differentially assign
obligations to men and women, or differentially
prohibit them from certain tasks.
Throughout Turkey and the heavily Turkic areas
of the Caucasus, cultural expectations dictate that
adult men earn a living and protect the domestic
turkey and the caucasus 247unit (and the nation) against external threats.
Women are responsible for childcare, food prepa-
ration, and quotidian household maintenance.
Failure to fulfill these obligations results in loss of
self-respect and social respectability, for both men
and women. Men are generally prohibited from
performing female duties, whereas the converse
rarely holds. For example, a man who is forced by
circumstance to regularly cook or to take care of
children is considered much more gender-deviant
than a woman who is forced to provide for her fam-
ily or take up arms in defense of home and country.
In other words, the norms that impose prohibitions
on women’s work are considerably more flexible
than those for men, and are more easily overridden
when in conflict with the family’s needs. Thus, most
of the regional variability in domestic arrangements
is accounted for by the wide range of tasks that
women perform in response to varying outcomes of
the constant negotiation between broad cultural
expectations and the practical requirements of daily
survival. For the same reason, women’s work has
undergone more dramatic changes than men’s in
response to socioeconomic transformations.
Agricultural production in the region is domi-
nated by small-scale family holdings where both
men and women engage in crop cultivation and
animal husbandry. Clearing and plowing of fields
are generally men’s work, while weeding (hoeing),
transplanting, and hand-irrigation are mostly per-
formed by women aided by children. The whole
household works in the fields during the harvest.
The maintenance of poultry and milking of live-
stock are also women’s work. Women, aided by
children, process raw agricultural products into
fuel, cooking ingredients (such as cracked wheat,
yogurt-wheat-soup mix [tarhana], noodles, tomato
paste, dried vegetables, smoked meats, cheese, and
butter), and crafting materials (such as straw for
basket-weaving, thread, and yarn). Along the Black
Sea coast where farms are relatively small and the
major crops (tea, tobacco, hazelnuts) do not
require annual plowing, women are frequently the
major cultivators while adult men engage in sea-
sonal cash-earning activities.
In rural households, the physical strength re-
quirement of a task is rarely a determining factor in
its gendering. For example, women frequently haul
heavy loads of straw, kindling, and water across
long distances, even when adult males are avail-
able. It is not unusual for rural women to carry the
stones or bricks for a building while men do the
masonry (Erdentu( 1959). Additionally, rural
women are almost solely responsible for childcare,
cooking, cleaning, knitting, weaving, and sewing.