Paper abstract:

What meaning is given to female work in the context of a gradual liberalization of Uzbekistan's economy? Based on four months of ethnographic fieldwork in a city of the Fergana Valley, I explored how women who work in the recently privatized educational sector make sense of their everyday work life. In this paper, I focus on ethnographic examples of female teachers' social interaction at a private language school. Thus, I aim to show how they navigate and reformulate the gendered notions around female work, while being embedded in the changing working conditions of teachers in this new economic sector. I argue that doing anthropological research with women at their workplace is crucial to shed light on the ambiguity of meaning-making of female work in this social space, which might be different compared to idealized gender norms that are formulated by their husbands or in-laws. Hence, this allows researchers on Central Eurasia to gain more differentiated understandings about the relationship of work and gender. Taking these ethnographic examples, I show the interlinkages of the workplace, consumption, home, the social environment, Islam, and class in which women draw on and challenge gendered notions around female work. Contrary to seeing Islam as an inhibitor of female work, Islam is often used by my research participants to justify their everyday work life and complain about 'wrong' gender norms and expectations.