Zulfiya Tursunova: Women’s Lives and Livelihoods in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan–Ceremonies of Empowerment and Peacebuilding
REVIEWS, 30 Jun 2014
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service
Women’s Lives and Livelihoods in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan: Ceremonies of Empowerment and Peacebuilding, by Zulfiya Tursunova, (Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2014, 248pp.)
Zulfiya Tursunova, a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment, on the basis of extensive field research, has written an important book highlighting the ways in which women deal with socio-economic change in post-USSR Uzbekistan.
During the Soviet period, the economic and social structure of the country had been planned as part of a larger whole. With independence, there had to be some re-adjustments in socio-economic macro-structures which also led to changes at micro levels of village, family and individual aspirations.
She studies livelihood resilience mechanisms of women in response to land tenure changes and modifications of social services such as health and education where women played a large role. Broad social change has an impact on family life. Change of employment as well as loss of employment has an impact on relations within the family. These changes are seen in the book by the extensive narratives which women tell.
The emphasis of the book is on the agency and empowerment of women as an on-going process centered in the local community. Through group participation, women who lack an equal share of valued resources − be it money, respect, or community standing − gain greater access to and control over these resources.
Women in particular have had to renew or create new forms of social groups to meet new needs. Women can form their own exclusive solidarity groups which exercise considerable social control in seeking alliances and support from other women in the community. Tursunova analyses in depth a form of rotating social and monetary-savings association − a gap − in which questions of knowledge, status, age and religious standing all play a role. This gap is outside the official Soviet-style women’s organizations and outside the current micro-credit banking system. By an analysis of the uses to which is put the savings − life-cycle events, home repairs, productive investments in farm animals etc − we see values and attitudes at work.
By looking at specific examples of interaction among the women in the gap, we see the broader economic, religious and cultural challenges facing women today. We see the ways in which socio-economic change impacts kinship relations and broader social networking. A good number of women are leaving state employment (education, health, culture, and services) to enter private employment (trade, handicrafts, gardening).
Although patriarchal norms for women remain strong as an ideal, practice shows the degree of agency − a capacity for action − which women have. Especially in rural areas, there is a growing number of households headed by women. The reasons vary but are most often associated with migration, divorce, abandonment, and adolescent parenthood. There is thus a need for rebuilding household and community links by drawing on both older traditional structures and creating new forms as part of vulnerability-reducing structures and lessening the economic dependency of women on men.
Tursunova stresses the multidimensionality of gender identities and roles, highlighting both the constraints upon and the opportunities for women. Gender roles are not fixed but in a constant process of development and negotiations with other women and men, based on the distribution of power , changes in attitudes and breaking of role stereotypes. She stresses the role of women’s rituals where women challenge subordination, abuse, and limited property rights.
The book is an important contribution to our understanding of the role of women in periods of social change, their agency and aspirations through listening to the stories they tell.
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René Wadlow, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and of its Task Force on the Middle East, is president and U.N. representative (Geneva) of the Association of World Citizens and editor of Transnational Perspectives. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 30 Jun 2014.
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