At the beginning of the twenty-first century, a number of major political developments have helped propel the South Caucasus to international attention. In April 2018, political protests in Armenia resulted in the toppling of Serzh Sargsyanâs semi-authoritarian regime. 1 This largely unexpected development saw former journalist and leader of the protest movement, Nikol Pashinyan, elected by lawmakers to the post of Prime Minister in May 2018, concluding this relatively peaceful, but no less surprising transfer of power. Ten years earlier, in August 2008, it was Armeniaâs neighbour, Georgia, that focused the international community, this time in the context of a five-day war with Russia over the separatist region of South Ossetia. This event was closely preceded by Georgiaâs own high-profile domestic political struggle that saw yet another transfer of power in the context of Georgiaâs 2003 Rose Revolution . Fifteen years later, and Georgiaâs domestic political scene, like Armeniaâs, remains vibrant. In December 2018, Salome Zurabishvili was inaugurated as Georgiaâs first female president, becoming the first female head of a state in the South Caucasus. 2 Her inauguration comes at a time of institutional transformation, as Georgia implements constitutional changes ahead of a planned transition from a presidential to parliamentary republic by 2024. In contrast, Azerbaijan has experienced little notable domestic political turbulence under the long-standing leadership of President Ilham Aliyev, in what appears to be a relatively consolidated authoritarian system. However, in April 2016, hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia flared, taking the international community by surprise, as the two countries resumed their conflict over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh 3 region for four days.
Given these political developments it is no surprise that themes of transition, ethnic conflict and security, often subsumed under the umbrella of âgeopoliticsâ take priority in scholarly and media debates on the South Caucasus region. However, parallel to these high-profile concerns and operating at the societal level, the lived experiences of its inhabitants, especially the experiences of women in the region remain largely under-elaborated and unexplored. This is despite the by-no-means inconsequential link between macro political outcomes of the type previously mentioned and the often slower-moving and subaltern issue of âsocial changeâ. It is with this in mind that this edited volume seeks to restore some balance to current debates by focusing on the everyday challenges faced by women living in the South Caucasus, their everyday struggles and their contributions to the regionâs history, societal life and politics.
As such, the original research underpinning the collection of essays in this volume helps redress the prevalent geopolitical focus to consider social change in the South Caucasus and in particular the role of female agency. In short, a focus on women does so much more than offer a better understanding of womenâs lives. Not least, it can show us how âdiscursive power functions by concealing the terms of its fabricationâ (Brown 2001, p. 122). The chapters in this volume offer a rich array of womenâs experiences during peace time, as well those times characterized by conflict, struggle and war. The approach taken in the chapters that follow is interdisciplinary, including essays written by sociologists, anthropologists, historians and feminist activists. By exploring the richness of womenâs experiences, this edited volume takes the view that gender is a category constructed by the social world, embracing the famous words of Simone de Beauvoir (1997): âone is not born, but rather becomes, a womanâ.
Diversity and Similarity: State Socialismâs Legacy on Gender Relations
One of the ironies of the current focus on geopolitics in the South Caucasus, often at the expense of broader issues of social change and the role of women, is that the South Caucasus remains a highly âinflexedâ region in the sense that it has experienced a great deal of historical juncture relating to both change and gender. During nearly seventy years of communist rule, the Soviet government oversaw a revolutionary change in nearly every aspect of life. At its core, this revolutionary change aimed to create a qualitatively new Soviet man and woman, in part by freeing women from bourgeois patriarchal oppression by means of educating women and fully incorporating them into the paid labour force . Bolshevik leaders, such as Aleksandra Kollontai, the head of the Partyâs womenâs division until early 1922, thought that the family was the site of womenâs oppression (Ashwin 2000, p. 5). In other words, it was believed that industrialization and economic development would liberate women from the traditional confines of the family (Lapidus 1978, p. 55).
The Soviet governmentâs commitment to equality between the sexes was demonstrated by the introduction of policies that officially guaranteed, for example, education equality, equal pay, the right to abortion and the reorganization of domestic labour and childcare (Buckley 1989). Women were supported by generous maternity and childcare benefits enabling them to develop their professional careers. Nonetheless, a wealth of publications has shown that in reality these policies did little to challenge traditional gender divisions. Male domination in the public sphere remained largely unquestioned and women continued to face a so-called âdouble burdenâ of work and home life (Corrin 1992). For example, while women were gradually qualifying for more education and had largely achieved parity with men in terms of enrolment by 1991, they were still concentrated in educational fields leading to careers with lower wage returnsâmostly in education, the social sciences, the humanities, medicine, law and economicsâwhile men tended to concentrate on more remunerative fields, such as skilled manual work and engineering (Ziemer 2018, p. 481). Hence, the formal structures of socialist society formed by the state as well as by the geographical separation of public and private spheres, heightened traditional gender identity as a cultural resource for both survival and resistance (Watson 1993, p. 472).
The end of the Cold War did not just erase EastâWest antagonism, but heralded a radical change in peopleâs everyday lives. However, the political, economic and social transitions which followed the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) led to a region-wide decline in welfare provision and dramatic changes in the economy affecting the living standards of every former Soviet citizen. The South Caucasus was not immune from these changes but experienced the additional impact of ubiquitous interethnic conflict and secessionist wars: the Nagorny Karabakh war being the first, dragging Armenia and Azerbaijan into a complex conflict from 1988 onwards, but followed in 1991â1993 by war in Georgiaâs breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. 4 In addition, 1988 witnessed a powerful earthquake in the North of Armenia that killed more than 25,000 people and destroyed tens of thousands of homes. Three decades later and this region is yet to fully recover from this disaster. As such, the combination of human-made and natural upheavals, in particular in Armenia and Georgia, renders poverty an enduring fact of life across the region. In 2017, The Asian Development Bank estimated that 21.9% of Georgians and 25.7% of Armenians live in poverty, contrasted with 5.9% of the population in Azerbaijan. In Nagorny Karabakh, according to the Republicâs National Statistical Service (2017), 23.3% of the population are destitute, with 6.2% experien...