The Caucasus and Central AsiaCaucasian and Central Asian women are currently
in a process of constant negotiation and renego-
tiation of their womanness, finding themselves
between a revival of Muslim norms and traditions, a
Western capitalist influence, and a recent Soviet his-
tory, all with completely different standards of what
it means to be both a woman and a citizen.
Soviet times
From the earliest days of rule, the Soviet Com-
munists regarded the inclusion of Central Asian
and Caucasian women in their very concept of citi-
zenship as a strategic priority. Equating the treat-
ment of women in these traditional societies with
slavery, they identified women as the “surrogate
proletariat” to engage in the class war and to wage
war against religion. The Soviets tried to make
women into fully-fledged citizens mainly by intro-
ducing legal reforms and social allowances for
women. They provided women with rights equal to
those of men by revising the existing legal system
and abolishing ≠àdaand Sharì≠a practices such as
polygamy, payment of kalym, and marriage with-
out consent of the bride. To draw women into
socialized production, they granted them free and
high level education, access to work in traditionally
male dominated fields (for example, engineering),
and multiple social allowances such as paid lengthy
maternity leave and state-sponsored childcare. By
establishing women’s sections (zhenotdely) within
the Communist Party and introducing a quota for
women of 30 percent of the seats in parliaments
and governing bodies, the Soviets pushed for female
presence in all spheres of public life.
Despite the very real improvements in facilities
and range of choices, and the greater visibility of
women in public life, the women’s conception of
themselves as citizens did not really change. In the
private sphere older patterns of behavior continued
to dominate gender relations. The Communists’
women’s liberation campaign failed because it was
perceived as the emasculation of men and the
defeminization of women. To give an example, the
mass unveiling of Uzbek women in 1927, known as
the khudzhum(the attack), symbolized for Uzbek
men a defeat and a brutal rape. The honor and dig-
Citizenship
nity of the whole community was suddenly and
monstrously violated. For the Communists, the
success of the khudzhumwas an ideological vic-
tory. To them, the parandzha, the veil of horsehair,
symbolized everything that they were fighting to
eradicate: oppression, ignorance, injustice, and
human degradation. For Central Asians, the veil
was a protection against unwanted contact with
strangers and against the physical grime of the envi-
ronment (Akiner 1997).
In response to the forced modernization, strong
cultural barriers were erected, behind which seden-
tary and nomad traditions were frozen, to guard
against Soviet encroachments. Women did not
assume the role of a revolutionary force to destroy
traditional society. Rather, they colluded in its
preservation. By accommodating external pres-
sures through the adoption of additional identities,
appropriate to the public sphere, they deflected
intrusions into the private domain, thereby pro-
tecting the integrity of the older disposition of fam-
ily roles and religious practices. Cut off from the
formal, male dominated teachings of Islam, women
became the primary transmitter of religious knowl-
edge to the younger generation in the home. In
Uzbekistan, otyns, female mullahs with no spiritual
education, preserved knowledge of women’s role in
rituals connected with the major life cycle cere-
monies (male circumcision, burial rites, marriage),
and semi-Islamic practices such as visits to the
graves of revered individuals (Olcott 1991).Post-Soviet times
After independence, women were caught between
conflicting concepts of citizenship: they longed for
the Soviet lifestyle with its high social security stand-
ards, at the same time feeling the need to return to
their “authentic” roots, with a renewed emphasis
on traditional domestic obligations, and continuing
along the road to greater personal independence
and freedom of choice.
In the Caucasus, nationalistic sentiments, fueled
by war, dominated the gender discourse. Con-
fronted with war, displacement, and destruction,
women chose to subordinate gender issues to
nationalist goals, constructing and perceiving their
role as auxiliary to the primary nationalist task.
Especially in Armenia, women felt constrained,