Gender ideals and income realities: Discourses about labor and gender in Uzbekistan

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Notes

1. This research project was conducted from 1996 to 1998 by the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Michigan, in partnership with scholars from Estonia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, with support of grants from the Ford Foundation and the National Council of Eurasian and Eastern European Research. The partner organization in Uzbekistan was Expert Research, headed by sociologist Alisher Ilkhamov. I did not take part in the focus groups or oral history interviews for this project. My familiarity with the materials and issues discussed in this article, and my interpretation come from my own research in Uzbekistan between 1991 and 2003, from involvement in the planning and initiation of this project and from translating the Uzbek focus groups into English.

2. Oral history interview with Mukarrama Yusupova, director of the private firm Mohigul, by Suyun Muhammedov, Farg'ona, Uzbekistan, 19 February 1997. Translation by Marianne Kamp.

3. Oral history interview, part 2, with Erkin Vahidov, poet and chairman of the foreign relations committee of the Supreme Parliament of Uzbekistan, by Marat Hojimuhammedov, Tashkent, 10 April 1997. Translation by Theresa Truax.

4. Oral history interview with Nozim Habibullaev, historian and director of the Timurid Museum, by Marat Hojimuhammedov, Tashkent, 12 February 1997. Translation by James Reische.

5. Tajik translations are by Andrei Yastchenko. The “shuttle trade” refers to petty trade across borders; throughout much of the former Soviet Union, women are the major participants in this trade. See National Geographic, May 1997; also see Ruth Mandel and Caroline Humphrey, eds, Markets and Moralities: Ethnographies of Postsocialism (Oxford: Berg, 2002). In Uzbekistan, women collect money and orders from acquaintances, travel abroad and purchase clothing and household items; upon return to Uzbekistan they may simply deliver orders to acquaintance, or they may sell goods in the bazaars. Some shuttle trade also goes on within Uzbekistan's borders, with village women traveling to cities with produce and back home with imported items to sell in the local bazaar. Sources on the shuttle trade: numerous articles both describing and critiquing the trade in 1996 issues of O'zbekiston Haqiqati, and my own conversations between 1992 and 1996 with women who are involved in the trade. In the five years following this research, travel abroad has become both more accepted and economically more difficult, and, perhaps for both reasons, discussions of women and the shuttle trade seem to have decreased.

6. Maxine Molyneux, “Women in Socialist Societies: Problems of Theory and Practice,” in Kate Young, Carol Wolkowitz and Roslyn McCullagh, eds, Of Marriage and the Market: Women's Subordination Internationally and Its Lessons (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 55–90.

7. Joan Huber, “A Theory of Family, Economy and Gender,” in Rae Lesser Blumberg, ed., Gender, Family and Economy: the Triple Overlap (London: Sage, 1991), p. 37.

8. In 1998, those who studied the transition assumed that former Soviet states were moving toward an economically capitalist structure. Uzbekistan's independent economy remains dominated by the state sector, movement toward privatization has been much slower than in other former Soviet states, and incentives for market orientation have fluctuated, so that by 2003 “the market” is no longer regarded as the answer that it seemed in 1996.

9. Rae Lesser Blumberg, “Income under Female versus Male Control: Hypotheses from a Theory of Gender Stratification and Data from the Third World,” in Rae Lesser Blumberg, ed., Gender, Family and Economy: the Triple Overlap (London: Sage, 1991), p. 99.

10. Male oversight was taken to its greatest extreme by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which legally forbade women's movement outside the home except when the woman was accompanied by a male family member. In many Arab countries, laws forbid women's travel outside the country except with written permission from a male guardian. In some Arab and Islamic states a woman can work outside the home only with the consent of their husband, and, in some, only in gender-segregated environments. Mahnaz Afkhami, ed., Faith & Freedom: Women's Human Rights in the Muslim World (Syracuse University Press, 1995); Suad Joseph, ed., Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000).

11. Concerns about women's freedom of movement are a constant motif in literature and discourse about Muslim women; see, for example, Annelies Moors, Women, Property and Islam: Palestinian Experiences 1920–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

12. Certain verses from the Quran can be cited as normative sources of practice in Islamic gender roles; men are designated as women's protectors and providers (4∶34). Among Uzbeks and in many other Islamic cultures, a woman's earnings are viewed as her own property (4∶32), and, unlike men's income, may be used for her own needs, rather than for family needs. See, for example, Diane Wolf, “Female Autonomy, the Family, and Industrialization in Java,” in Rae Lesser Blumberg, ed., Gender, Family and Economy: the Triple Overlap (London: Sage, 1991), pp. 135–144; see also Blumberg on the family incomes of certain African Muslim groups, in “Income Control,” p. 104.

13. Women have long been present in bazaars in Uzbekistan, both as buyers and as sellers. But in the 1990s many women who previously had other employment found that they needed a new way to earn a living, and turned to selling in the bazaar. Muhabbat was from the rural Bukhara Uzbek women focus group.

14. Immanuel Wallerstein and Joan Smith, “Households as an Institution in the World Economy,” in Rae Lesser Blumberg, ed., Gender, Family and Economy: the Triple Overlap (London: Sage, 1991), pp. 225–226.

15. Scattered positive comments on freedom to earn additional income are found in transcripts from these focus groups: Bukhara Uzbek men, Tashkent Russian women, Bukhara Uzbek women, Tashkent Uzbek women, Tashkent Uzbek men, Tashkent Russian men, Bukhara Tajik women.

16. Among the three states studied in this project, Uzbekistan is unlike Estonia or Ukraine, in that the Russian minority is less than 10%. In all three countries, the titular nationality forms a solid majority of the population: in the mid 1990s, 64.2% of the Estonian population was made up of ethnic Estonians; in Ukraine, 73% are Ukrainian; and in Uzbekistan, 80% are Uzbek. However, Russians are 28.7% of the population of Estonia, and 22% of the population of Ukraine, but only 5.5% of the population of Uzbekistan, where Tajiks, declared and undeclared, are probably a more significant proportion of the population than Russians. Thus, while researchers in Estonia and Ukraine selected Estonians and Russians, and Ukrainians and Russians, respectively, for focus groups, the Uzbekistan study encompassed other ethnic minorities. CIA World Fact Book, 1996 estimates, <http://222.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/>.

17. Hereafter, groups will be referred to by city, ethnicity and gender, e.g. “Bukhara Uzbek women.” In several focus groups, several participants had the same name. All names in focus groups have been changed to protect the anonymity of participants.

18. Differences in the ways that participants chose to introduce themselves are mostly explained by moderator influence.

19. There is no notable gender difference in the ways that men and women in the Uzbekistan focus groups think and speak. The phenomenon noted by Rein Voorman in the Estonian groups (also in this volume), that men spoke at abstract levels while women spoke at more concrete, personal levels, is not found in the Uzbekistan focus groups. Rather, the transcripts of these groups suggest, first, that levels of abstraction are related to moderator style, and, second, that speaking abstractly rather than concretely about work, income, inflation and employment may have some correlation with class. In the Uzbekistan data, Tashkent Uzbek men, who all had higher education, spoke consistently at the abstract, societal level, while participants in all other groups shifted between societal and personal comment. However, an examination of moderator questioning shows that the moderator for Tashkent Uzbek men posed every question on an abstract level, while moderators in all other groups asked for personal input, with questions such as “Have you experienced this?”

20. Most recruitment of focus group candidates in Uzbekistan took place through work or government organizations. However, obstruction by village leaders in the Bukhara area forced EXPERT's recruiters to find an alternative source of participants for two Uzbek groups, and they turned to local bazaars. As it turns out, this accident has happy results for our data; a great many people in Uzbekistan are in fact making their living through petty trade, although they may be officially employed, and when recruited through their official place of work may represent that work as their real occupation. Their presence in our data highlights a nuance of the Uzbek perception of the meaning of “market”: as Morgan Liu has observed, the term for “market economy” in Uzbek is bozor iqtisodi or “bazaar economy,” and there is a slippage of meaning between the concept of market capitalism and the petty trade of the bazaar—which in practice and in concept are one and the same for most Uzbeks.

21. A caveat must be made here: the tape quality for the Karakalpak men's focus group was very bad, and the moderator of the group reconstructed the transcript based in part on the tape and in part on notes. The transcript is far shorter than those of other groups, and probably does not reflect all that the men said. Translations of Moynak Karakalpak men and women transcripts are by Kagan Arik.

22. For focus group participants in Zakarpattja region, Ukraine, open borders meant opportunities for laborers to find temporary work in Eastern European countries, in factories, construction, etc. By contrast, in Uzbekistan, working class and farm worker participants in focus groups appreciated the possibility of travel abroad in connection with making the Hajj and, more importantly, engaging in petty trade, but did not anticipate going abroad to work as laborers. See J. A. Dickinson, in this volume. Since the mid 1990s, ordinary labor migration has increased in Uzbekistan, with many workers going to Russia or South Korea on year-long contracts.

23. The opportunity to travel abroad, for study, work or pilgrimage, as one of the benefits of independence was mentioned by Ferghana Uzbek women, Bukhara Tajik men, Bukhara Uzbek women, Tashkent Uzbek men and Tashkent Uzbek women. By contrast, Tashkent Russian women bewailed the high cost of travel to Russia, and complained that they could not visit relatives or take their children to Russia's lakes and forests.

24. The moderator of the Bukhara women's groups raised the topic of “tois”—wedding feasts and other celebrations—in focus group discussions, noting that they seemed to be growing in expense and abundance. Some of the women viewed these developments as positive, while others saw them as evidence of social stratification. In ordinary conversation and in the press in Uzbekistan, there is a lively critique of extravagant spending on tois; many people who cannot afford to do so host large, expensive weddings, sometimes by going into debt. Fotima Ibroghimova, an elderly woman who is a religious teacher from Bukhara, spoke in her oral history interview of the increase in religious celebrations, noting, “this takes a lot of time, we cause women much bother, and then it keeps being said that this is increasing difficulties, and the waste of money is increasing. All of this is connected with the increase in rituals. So now we are spreading the understanding that whenever one observes a ritual, wasting money should not be permitted, and no harm should be done to the household.” Oral history interview with Fotima Ibroghimova, by Manzila Kurbanova, Bukhara, Uzbekistan,10 June 1997. Translation by Marianne Kamp.

25. Translations of Tashkent Russian men and women transcripts are by Karen Aguilar.

26. Ruth Hayden (Turn your Money Life Around: The Money Book for Women [Deerfield Beach, FL: HCI Publishers, 1992]) discusses this phenomenon among American men and women; she says that, faced with a limited budget, women are more likely to choose economizing as a method for controlling their budget, while men are more likely to consider taking additional work or changing jobs to increase income. “Women and Money,” Sound Money, Public Radio International, 23 May 1998.

27. Vohidov interview, part 2, 10 April 1997.

28. Bukhara Tajik men, Bukhara Tajik women.

29. Tashkent Uzbek women spoke of young men who sold imported goods at the Hippodrome Bazaar as spreaders of disease. In other groups, such as Ferghana Uzbek men and Bukhara Tajik men, there were comments that “entrepreneur” was just a new term for speculator or profiteer.

30. Tashkent Uzbek men. Similar voices appear in Tashkent Uzbek women, Bukhara Tajik women, Bukhara Uzbek men, Bukhara Uzbek women and Ferghana Uzbek women.

31. Tashkent Uzbek women, Bukhara Tajik women, Bukhara Uzbek women.

32. The Uzbek and Tajik ritual economy creates constant demand for traditional clothing: embroidered skullcaps, women's silk dresses and loose pants and men's robes are gifts and standard garb at most life-cycle events. In the 1970s and 1980s, Uzbek women's participation in the formal labor force was substantially lower than that of women in the European parts of the USSR—probably less than 50% of Uzbek women were officially employed, and that figure included those women who went on repeated three-year maternity leaves. Zhenshchiny v SSSR 1989: Statisticheskie materialy (Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1989), pp. 17–18; Zhenshchiny Sovetskogo Uzbekistana: kratkii statisticheskii sbornik (Tashkent, 1987), pp. 11, 15. In her 1980s study of labor in Uzbekistan, Nancy Lubin cited surveys showing Uzbek women's preference for work in the “private and household sector” rather than work in “social production.” Nancy Lubin, Labor and Nationality in Soviet Central Asia: An Uneasy Compromise (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). pp. 164–165.

33. In the early twentieth century, when many Uzbek and Tajik women lived in relative seclusion, sewing and embroidering at home provided income for many women. In the 1920s, organizers for the Women's Division found establishing sewing and embroidery collectives as the most effective means for providing women with employment and income. See Marianne Kamp, “Unveiling Uzbek Women: Liberation, Representation and Discourse, 1906–1929,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1998, Chapter 1. Sewing is mentioned frequently in the women focus groups as well as in some oral history interviews: in addition to Yusupova, Bahramjon Ergashev, Deputy Hokim of Ferghana province, noted that his daughter-in-law, a teacher, spent all of her time after school sewing for women, for extra income. Interviewed by Suyun Muhammedov, Ferghana, Uzbekistan, 20 February 1998.

34. It should be noted that Russian women frequently work as salespeople in the bazaars in Tashkent, especially selling imported clothing. This one focus group should not be over-interpreted to suggest that Russians in Uzbekistan are not interested in entrepreneurial activity.

35. In an oral history interview, Nina Kiriukhina, a gynecologist from the Ferghana regional hospital, stated that 60% of her patients were housewives and opined that “the number of women who do not work is increasing.” She then modified this statement by noting that some of her women patients referred to themselves as housewives even though they engaged in private business activities. Interview, part 1, 20 February 1997, with Suyun Muhammedov. Translated by Rachel Farber.

36. Similar statements, some with religious emphasis, appear in Bukhara Tajik men, Bukhara Uzbek men, Ferghana Uzbek men and Moynak Karakalpak men.

37. The som is Uzbekistan's unit of currency.

38. It is probably impossible to know whether more men or more women are involved in the shuttle trade, but women's activity in this area stirred comment and criticism in the Uzbek press in 1995 and 1996.