FROM THE CINDERELLA OF SOVIET MODERNIZATION TO THE POST- SOVIET RETURN TO “NATIONAL TRADITIONS”: WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN AZERBAIJAN, ARMENIA, AND GEORGIA Nona Shahnazaryan, Edita Badasyan, Gunel Movlud Caucasus Edition – Journal of Conflict Transformation 2016 This paper discusses in a comparative perspective the issues of women’s political participation in the countries of the South Caucasus focusing both on differences and common trends of policies toward women in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The analysis of the Soviet heritage in the area of women’s emancipation allows tracking the “logic” of post-Soviet transformations without fragmenting the post-Soviet experiences and pulling them out of context. This approach exposes which processes of the modern period are rooted in the Soviet past and which have fundamentally new sources. Attention is focused on the changes in the system of earmarked spaces for women (i.e. the quota system) and the discourses that are formed around this topic. The paper exposes perspectives impeding female leadership, and, on the contrary, promoting women’s political participation and involvement in the public sphere. The paper also deciphers what discursive or verbal, non-verbal, and other strategies women use in politics in order to be accepted professionally. 1 Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................................. 3 Women’s political rights and representation in the Soviet era ................................................................................... 4 State feminism and the “working mother contract” ............................................................................................... 4 Orientalism – socialism – gender ............................................................................................................................. 4 Cinderellas for the Soviet Industrial Revolution....................................................................................................... 5 The system of reservation: Quotas .......................................................................................................................... 6 Women’s rights in the post-Soviet period ................................................................................................................... 6 The realities of the nation-states: the dashing 1990s .............................................................................................. 6 Women as parliament decor: New facets of political object-/subjectivity ............................................................. 7 The Debate on quotas: A redeeming solution or a conflation of concepts? ........................................................... 9 Quota system and national structures of state power .......................................................................................... 11 Attitude toward female leadership: Mass media ...................................................................................................... 12 “Non-feminine” professions: police and army ........................................................................................................... 13 From Soviet-time women’s councils to civic activity: women in the civil society ..................................................... 14 Gender and the law: Domestic violence: Personal is political ................................................................................... 15 Routine discursive construction of gender inequality ............................................................................................... 17 Women and peace initiatives in post-conflict region ................................................................................................ 18 Empowerment – Karabakh-style: Different social realities ....................................................................................... 19 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................. 20 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................................ 22 Acronyms and Initialisms ............................................................................................................................................ 26 2 From the Cinderella of Soviet Modernization to the Post-Soviet Return to “National Traditions”: Women’s Rights in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia Nona Shahnazaryan, Edita Badasyan, Gunel Movlud Introduction This paper discusses in a comparative perspective the issues of women’s political participation in the countries of the South Caucasus focusing both on differences and common trends of policies toward women in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The main research questions have been: how have the Soviet and post-Soviet transformations and social cataclysms affected the political rights of women? How does (or doesn’t) women’s political participation influence social processes in the South Caucasus? What avenues lead women to politics? The analysis of the data collected in these countries though different types of interviews and conversations, together with the analysis of secondary sources has allowed to outline key dynamics that can shed light on these questions. To this end, attention is focused on the changes in the system of earmarked spaces for women (i.e. the quota system) and the discourses that are formed around this topic. The paper exposes perspectives impeding female leadership, and, on the contrary, promoting women’s political participation and involvement in the public sphere. Since politics is conventionally “not a female thing”, the paper also deciphers what discursive or verbal, non-verbal, and other strategies women use in politics in order to be accepted professionally. The research that led to this paper revealed unexpected touching points between the discriminatory practices that were put under scrutiny such as the link between domestic violence and women’s agency or subjectivity in politics. An array of key questions of regional relevance has been touched upon in the paper. In particular, the paper looks at the effect on women’s empowerment of: - the memory of the Soviet past; - the conflicts in the region; - the mass media; - the activities of international organizations, civil societies, and activists; - the system of traditional values. According to the authors, the detailed analysis of the Soviet heritage in the area of women’s emancipation allows tracking the “logic” of post-Soviet transformations without fragmenting the post-Soviet experiences and pulling them out of context. The diachronic approach exposes which processes of the modern period are rooted in the Soviet past and which have fundamentally new sources and determinants. The contribution of the three authors allows the identification of shared and specific elements in the area of women’s rights in the state entities of the South Caucasus that are still under transformation including the de facto Nagorno Karabakh Republic (de facto NKR), unrecognized by the international community. The inclusion of the latter in this research (and the leaving out of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – similar entities on the de jure territory of Georgia) is conditioned by the fact that there have been serious breakthroughs in the area of women’s political participation in Nagorno Karabakh. In this regard, the situation in Nagorno Karabakh is significantly different from the one in Armenia and in Azerbaijan. The Nagorno Karabakh experience offers new prospects for women’s emancipation and poses fresh dilemmas related to the active participation of women in a “traditionally male” domain – the active military environment. 3 Women’s political rights and representation in the Soviet era State feminism and the “working mother contract” Undoubtedly, the experience of women’s emancipation in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had a significant influence on post-Soviet state building. Raising the status of women and their political participation in the USSR had its specific stages and ambiguities. The Bolsheviks were the first state leaders in history who tried restructuring and reconstructing social relationships between men and women1. However, along with the adoption of decrees that fully and unconditionally equated men and women in their rights, the Soviet government banned all independent women’s groups. As in all other areas, the government monopolized the protection of women’s interests. The emancipation of Soviet women through a revolution on the cultural and everyday routine levels gave start to an entirely new phenomenon – state feminism. The years between 1925 and 1928 became the apogee of the cultural revolution with an emphasized gender component. Social programs targeting women were based on the fundamental studies of August Bebel who claimed that women were structurally the weakest and suppressed link throughout the entire human history, including the era of industrialization (Бебель 1959, 267-274). Within the framework of this policy, the single-party government took under its protection women’s departments (zhenotdel) and later women’s councils (zhensovet) that were created by the party itself. In his address “To the Working Women” Vladimir Lenin stressed,