Central AsiaIdentity politics in Central Asia exists on differ-
ent levels – international, regional, and local. In the
first, East (tradition) confronts West (modernity).
In the second, attempts are made to distinguish
among the various national groupings of the re-
gion, while the third focuses on internal differ-
ences, at national, local, or clan level. In all three,
much of the discourse takes place around gender
identities, and images of women are used as coun-
ters in male political games.
During the 1920s the Bolsheviks attempted to re-
engineer Central Asian gender identities, especially
femininity, characterized by submission to male
control and sexual purity. The region’s women
found themselves contested terrain between the
Soviet state and their own cultures. Throughout the
Soviet period, images of veiled Muslim women
and Sovietized female workers were used in strug-
gles over identity politics, with different meanings
by each side, so that Asian women retained their
central place in the continuing battle between
opposing, albeit shifting, visions of identities. Not-
withstanding the ideological variations among the
successive Soviet leaders, which shaped the rela-
tionship of different generations of Central Asian
women with socialism and nationalism (Kuehnast
1997), the basic dichotomy between Sovietized
modernity and Central Asian traditions continued
to be expressed through much the same female
images.
Since 1991, in their endeavors to legitimize their
existence as distinct nations, the governments of all
Central Asia’s five republics have acknowledged
Islam as an integral part of their heritage. Here,
pride in nation (as well as, in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz-
stan, and Turkmenistan, clan or tribe) is under-
pinned by images of heroic masculinity, in which is
embedded control over women. The imagined new
nationhood is to be supported by women’s return
to a notional pre-Soviet submission and domestic-
ity, with a combination of Islam and nationalism
employed to legitimize both the new states and
male claims to power, situating women who refuse
to comply as potential traitors both to the nation-
building project and their religion. This resurgence
of traditional gender identities coexists with national
constitutions that in general legalize formal equal-
Identity Politics
ity between the sexes, in keeping with both Soviet
and international law.
Opposition forces, especially in Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan, also make use of gender identities in
their political strategizing. The most important are
the Islamic parties, who challenge state-run reli-
gious establishments with images of bearded men
and women in ™ijàb, important issues both in the
Tajik civil war and in recent political clashes in
Uzbekistan. To the governments of Central Asia,
the specter of Afghanistan is sufficient to legitimize
serious repression of Islamic movements. Beards
have been banned from the Tajik army and those
wearing them have been beaten by police in
Uzbekistan, where veiled students also encounter
problems.
Women’s endeavors to negotiate their identities
through these political minefields are very varied.
Older educated women may prefer a Sovietized
image, while many younger ones are fascinated by
representations of fashionable Western women
portrayed in advertisements and soap operas. While
neither of these conforms to current political
trends, neither do the ™ijàbwearers, who, in Uzbe-
kistan at least, are practically considered enemies of
the state.
Governments promote traditional identities, part-
way between these extremes, using local media to
encourage a concept of Asian women as primarily
housewives and mothers, supported by breadwin-
ner husbands. Thus, implicitly they concur with
religious extremists’ calls for women to renounce
paid labor and secular higher education.
In the current depressed economy, such feminine
identities permit to go unchallenged the significant
decrease of women’s participation in politics and
public life in general. They were the first to be laid
off from state enterprises and the last to be rehired;
they have noticeably been discriminated against in
such matters as the redistribution of land from the
former collective and state farms. Ironically, high
male unemployment and low wages have forced
large numbers of women to enter the informal
labor market. They thereby retain notional domes-
ticated identities while simultaneously making a
living, thus partially satisfying the demands of the
conservatives while reducing the obligations of
governments to provide jobs.
In all five states, personal identities are strongly