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This presentation examines the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on women’s livelihoods, migration, feminization of poverty, and its effects on women’s health and well-being.

Paper abstract:

This presentation examines the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on women’s precarious livelihoods and well-being in Uzbekistan. The feminist analysis aims to examine the gendered nature of the pandemic and its social and economic outcomes by looking at the unequal distribution of pandemic risks. Viewing these conditions through a conceptual feminist framework and lenses of empowerment helps to understand the differential impact of the pandemic on women’s sense of agency and outcomes, given that women in particular experience multiple inequities and hence heightened precarity in the economy.

Based on emerging research on the effects of the pandemic, the author analyzes precarious gendered livelihoods, migration and motherhood, feminization of poverty, the effects on women’s health and well-being, and the rise in domestic violence. Women often experience and are subject to: 1) working in low-wage sectors and having low income, expenditures and food security, 2) physical hazards as elements of precarity, 3) increased domestic work and caregiving, 4) poor access to education, property rights and representation at all levels of the society, 5) diminished social networks and welfare and 6) emotional distress, anxiety, and domestic violence. I argue that under COVID-19, the economy deepened the precarity of labor and further intensified gender inequalities and intersectional vulnerabilities.

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The paper focuses on illuminating women’s agency in sustaining the Buryat-Mongolian community amid geopolitical and socioeconomic transformations in Eurasia. Various Buryat-Mongolian tribes that originated in the Mongol lands gravitated to the area around Lake Baikal in southern Siberia which was colonized by the Russian empire in the 17th century. The cross-border motion of ideas, relations and practices had nonetheless continued, giving rise to the Buryat-Mongolian transnational imaginary community. This community had been rooted in the shared cultural code containing a set of principles, rules and norms that defined the parameters of Buryat-Mongolian identity.

In this paper, I argue that while the Buryat-Mongols within the larger family of Mongolic peoples had been traditionally governed by the male-determined clan principle, the 21st century marked a major shift that has seen the (re-)emergence of women’s agency as a de facto underlying force that helps sustain collective ethnocultural identity. Notably, this is manifested in women-led Buryat language preservation, post-Soviet feminization of lay Buddhism, and care and domestic work that ensures the vitality of the community. In this process, however, women have been leveraged to support the ethnocultural tradition locally, while instrumentalized to achieve broader economic, demographic and political objectives within the state’s vested interests. Such arrangements have been embedded in paternalistic social norms amid rising neoliberal ideology of the post-colonial state. Nevertheless, women have transcended the post-colonial realm to exercise their agency and (re)produce culturally encoded knowledge, practices and values within and beyond frontiers.

In the existing epistemology, the history of Buryat-Mongols has not only been relegated to the margins of imperialist hegemonic discourse but it has also been largely gender-blind, with little recognition of women’s agency. I interpret this as a symptom of the transboundary patriarchal order as part of the larger colonial power matrix. Based on archival records, over 50 in-depth interviews, and fieldworks in Buryatia, Mongolia and India between 2019 and 2023, the proposed paper aims to reconstruct patriarchal narratives and deepen our understanding of heterogenous post-colonial experiences through an intersectional gender lens. It also reimagines the conventional conceptions of the ‘center’ by reconsidering the positioning of the Buryat-Mongolian borderland away from the geographical ‘periphery’ to the heartland of the broader Eurasian space, while creating a more holistic ethnocultural landscape.

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There is a common understanding that the older generation always holds traditional views, while the younger represent revolutionary ideas. However, today's Kyrgyzstan is characterized by directly opposite tendencies. The older generation, which has an experience of the Soviet emancipation of women, adhering to traditional cultural values about family, at the same time supports the independence, freedom and advancement of women in society. The opposite position is held by the younger generation, for which Islamic identity is more important than ethnic. As a rule, these are religious, or near-religious youth. Their family values are based on the Quran. From their point of view, a woman's place is in the family, but not in society. A woman should devote herself entirely to the service of her husband and the upbringing of her children. More than 120 Islamic educational institutions, financed by various foreign Islamic foundations, are working to change young women and men, displacing the influence of social networks, their own parents, and schools.

There is another part of the youth who have accepted the Western liberal doctrine of absolutely equal rights for men and women. This generation ignore traditional family values that their parents impose on them. Young people are not ready to sacrifice their personal interests for the sake of a family. Divorces have become commonplace. Children become victims of irresponsible young parents.

Hypothesis. Since the older generation does not consider to interfere in modern processes, the main struggle of views on the role of the family and the place of a woman will unfold in the very environment of such dissimilar modern youth: believers and liberals. The believing youth will win the upper hand, who will be able to save a family, with clearly defined gender roles. The liberal part of the youth will continue its never-ending struggle for human rights, women's rights, and the rights of sexual minorities. The further, the greater the gap will form between believers and liberals.

Methodology. To obtain certain conclusions, unstructured interview methods and an analysis of existing studies on the problems of the family and the place and role of women over the past ten years will be used.

Key words: family values, gender roles, women's rights, emancipation.

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Paper abstract:

Despite the declared equality of rights and opportunities, some groups of Kazakhstani citizens still are more privileged than others. For example, though women comprise a half of Kazakhstani population, they have only 27% of seats in Majilis (lower chamber of Parliament). In Government, only 3 out of 19 ministries are headed by women. This share is not enough for female politicians to try to turn the tide and advocate for women’s issues. They have to build themselves in the existing paradigm with men’s prevalence and play by their rules. The same situation is with the youth. The average age of a Kazakhstani citizen is 32 years, while the average age of parliamentarians is 50.

This status quo reproduces the perception of women and young people not as a subject, but an object which needs to be influenced by the tools of information, gender and youth policies.

In such conditions, the most promising way for women and youth to participate in decision-making process is civic technologies and grassroot self-organization, however, these tools are not always available for the two groups. To define the barriers that prevent young people and women to take part in self-organization, 16 synchronous and 2 asynchronous focus groups were conducted in March 2022. In result of the study, it was revealed that there are barriers that can be attributed to all Kazakhstanis, such as information poverty and fear of being an activist, but there are also some gender and age specific barriers that don’t allow women and youth be more active and enterprising. I argue that the factors preventing women from participating in civic activities and/or self-organization are different from those for the youth. The former are held back by the conservative views of community they live in while the latter are usually coopted by government with the help of various tools which I call the “appeasement policy”.