Abstract:

Launched in 2023, the Central Asia and Mongolia Gender Data Portal (CAMGDP, available at https://camgdp.org) has been created by to assist scholars, academics, activists, and students in finding gender-related data on Central Asia and Mongolia. The portal compiles quantitative and qualitative sources, informational websites, media publications, social media, and organizations related to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia. CAMGDP highlights both country-specific resources and sites that provide cross-country comparisons, uncovering both differences that arise from the distinct environments in each country and similarities from the influence of common cultural, linguistic, and political factors. Gender is the chosen lens, but the resources identified are broad and inclusive since gender intersects with all aspects of society.

Given the rising interest in the region, the goal of CAMGDP is to provide a guide to everyone committed to non-violent knowledge production on Central Asia and Mongolia. The description of resources goes beyond listing, but through description also assists in the critical analysis of gender-related data and publications available on Central Asia and Mongolia. Tagging allows for searching and filtering across multiple dimensions such as topic, language, and country. While INGOs and their contribution are important, the portal prioritizes local initiatives and grassroots organizations in an effort to give them the same credit and exposure that their international and foreign counterparts often receive in Western scholarship and media. By creating a comprehensive data portal with relevant reflections, remarks, and facts, we hope to help researchers find local, regional, and international initiatives, publications, and secondary sources and engage in a more horizontal work with Central Asian and Mongolian communities.

This paper describes initial and ongoing work on development of the portal, research on sources for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (the first phases of the project), and the creation of resource guides and background guides in Kazakh, Uzbek, Russian, and English. Issues in the identification of relevant resources, their intersection with political and social currents related to gender in these countries, and related topics of open knowledge creation and dissemination under sometimes challenging conditions are discussed.

Most importantly, the portal is designed as a platform for collaboration, using Github as a widely used and easily accessible framework, allowing the ability to suggest sites and edits to existing content, with the long-term goal of building a larger community of contributors and editors. The paper discusses this potential for community-building and collaboration to prioritize local perspectives.