being the guardians of the nation and bastions of
resistance against assimilation. Here, a revived
discourse of genocide (harking back to the large-
scale 1915 slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire) and ongoing threats to Armenian survival
appealed to women to remain home, maintain the
family economically and morally, inspire their men
with patriotism, and give birth to future soldiers
(Dudwick 1997).
In Central Asia, however, nationalist sentiments
could not mobilize masses. The Soviet Union’s col-
lapse was greeted with ambivalence and reluctance.
Here, top-down nationalism played a major role in
defining women’s concepts of citizenship. Presi-
dents functioned as primary narrators of gendered
nation-building, nationalism, and national iden-
tity-forming. Reasserting their authority through
the symbolic identification of the head of state as
the “Father of the Nation,” they a reinstated patri-
archal values. Campaigning that women were sup-
posed to be the “guardians of home and hearth,”
they perpetuated a fertility cult aimed at increasing
their ethnic groups’ populations and thence their
power both within their state and in the region as a
whole. At the same time, the fixed quota represen-
tation practiced under the Soviet system was
removed. Politics became a “men’s business,” dom-
inated by clan interests and tribal resource alloca-
tion. Women withdrew from politics, identifying
political action with “masculine behavior, power
struggles, private property disputes, corruption
and hypocrisy” (LaFont 2001).
The post-Soviet nation-building process was ac-
companied by a revival of Muslim norms, idioms,
and practices, also defining women’s post-Soviet
concepts of citizenship. Freedom of worship al-
lowed the pilgrimage to holy places, mazàrs, the
opening of madrasas and Islamic cultural centers as
well as the establishment of women’s non-govern-
mental organizations (NGOs) that aimed at revi-
talizing Muslim traditions. This Islamic revival
evoked a call for legalization of old, semi-Islamic
Central Asian and Caucasian traditions such as
payment of kalym, bride kidnapping, and poly-
gamy. Though officially debated and widely prac-
ticed, these traditions were never legalized. Ruling
elites as well as the better part of the population
rejected the agenda of conservative Islamists who
pressed for enforced sex segregation, compulsory
veiling, and the restoration of Sharì≠a in family law.
The strict implementation of Muslim norms and
law in countries such as Taliban-led Afghanistan or
WahhàbìSaudi Arabia figured as deterring rather
than as attracting examples for the overwhelmingly
secular societies in Central Asia and Caucasus.20 citizenship
Despite the emergence of nationalist and Muslim
identities, secular, pro-Western concepts of citizen-
ship predominate in the identity-building process
currently underway, leading to the break-up of
long-standing borders and boundaries and a con-
siderable reversal of new gender roles in public and
private life. This process is accelerated by the dete-
rioration of social welfare and the collapse of the
economic system. Women and men are more and
more forced to make compromises with dominant
gender identities and to make adjustments, often as
part of desperate strategies to survive the new situ-
ation. Men see their ability to support their families
remarkably reduced. Women feel impelled to seek
for cash contributions to the household. As the tra-
ditional sexual division of labor is changing, rela-
tions of authority and responsibility between men
and women are destabilizing. The extended family
is transforming into a broken family, a single-par-
ent family, or even a polygamous family. Violence
against women, female slavery, prostitution, traf-
ficking in women, and rapes have become wide-
spread phenomena, radically challenging the
concept of women as citizens equal to men, which
women favor, formerly imposed by the Soviets and
propagated by Western societies.
In post-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia, women
find themselves in a dilemma, caught between dif-
ferent concepts of citizenship. Socially and econom-
ically they are encouraged to seek emancipation
while ethnically and religiously they are supposed
to return to old behavioral norms where the func-
tions of bearing and caring for children, looking
after their husbands, and fulfilling their household
duties are their sole lot (Tabyshalieva 2002).
Despite awareness of this dilemma, there is no dis-
cussion underway focusing on women’s contribu-
tion to the construction of citizenship in the
Caucasian and Central Asian societies. Although
women have taken the opportunity to become
involved in society by establishing political parties
and NGOs, they have so far refrained from launch-
ing a broad women’s movement. None of the
women-led NGOs has an explicit feminist agenda,
and only a few take up the issue of women’s rights
at all. The majority of women’s organizations have
devoted themselves to channeling assistance to sin-
gle mothers, families with many children, and
disabled and handicapped persons. While several
small women’s parties have formed, women figure
in very insignificant numbers in larger political par-
ties, none of which has shown interest in women’s
issues. In consequence of this feminist disengage-
ment, women do not take an active part in the con-
struction of post-Soviet citizenship. The degree of