Globalization and Changing Gender Norms in Azerbaijan
FARIDEH HEYAT School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK
Abstract ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the Republic of Azerbaijan, the opening up of borders and the transition to a free market economy have paved the way not only for economic transformations but also for cultural intrusion from the West and the South. This has coincided with the intensification of globalizing processes across the world over the past two decades. This article examines the impact of the ensuing changes on gender norms and the position of women in public and domestic spheres in Azerbaijan. Pointing to the paradoxical gender ideology under the Soviet system and the way that it has evolved in recent years, the article examines the impact of conflicting ideologies and exogenous influences, such as the advent of the commercialization of sex, on women’s economic position and public presence. It finds that, although some of the old ambiguities in gender norms and relations are being eroded, new gender asymmetries are arising along with contradictions and new tensions in gender and family relations. The diversification of perceptions of femininity and gender norms is shown to have occurred in tandem with the intensification of regional disparities, in particular the metropolitan-periphery divide, which has resulted from globalizing processes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keywords Azerbaijan, Azeri, gender relations, globalization, ideology, post-Soviet
INTRODUCTION The opening up of the borders of the Azerbaijan Republic, following the collapse of the communist regime, paved the way not only for economic transformations but also for cultural intrusion from the West and the South with potentially profound impacts on gender dynamics and the position of women in Azeri society. Along with the Central Asian republics, Azerbaijan
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 8:3 September 2006, 394– 412 ISSN 1461-6742 print=ISSN 1468-4470 online # 2006 Taylor & Francis http:==www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080=14616740600793010
was one of the most insulated regions of the USSR. The extent of the Soviet regime’s grip on Azeri society and its insecurity concerning its Muslim periphery were such that, until the mid-1980s, the substantial number of Azeri citizens with close relations living south of the border or elsewhere in non-communist countries had to hide their identity in public, practically denouncing their kin ties.1 Over the past decade, however, there has been a flood of information, images, businessmen, aid workers, oil workers, Muslim and Christian missionaries and long-lost relations, blood or fictive, into the country. Those contacts have confused and further complicated the social and cultural landscape of a country coping with substantial demographic changes as a consequence of war and outward migration. This is most marked in Baku, the capital city and centre of the oil industry, where the foreign population and their businesses are concentrated. The city’s distinct cosmopolitan past, both under the Soviet system and during the oil-related early modernization at the start of the twentieth century, has facilitated its receptivity to globalizing processes at the end of the twentieth century.2 Globalization as a socio-cultural process and the variety of responses to it locally have been widely discussed in recent literature.3 While there is ongoing debate concerning the impact of these processes on cultural forms around the world in terms of homogeneity versus heterogeneity, it remains clear that there has been an intensification of the process of global interconnectedness over the last two decades. Ethnographic collections on cultural globalization (e.g. Inda and Rosaldo 2002) provide many examples of cultural flows that accompany the increased movements of capital, people, commodities, images and ideologies. According to the discourse of cultural imperialism, the dominant direction of the cultural flow across the world is from the West to the rest. Whether in music, fashion, styles, eating habits, consumer goods, political culture or a technical-scientific worldview, it is the western cultural forms that have increasingly penetrated different regions of the world, subsuming and dominating local forms. In Azerbaijan, this is particularly noticeable among the youth in Baku who eagerly follow the latest in western pop music, fashion and film, are very keen on learning English and display little interest in traditional Azeri music or literature. At the same time there is evidence of cultural flows within the Third World periphery. Take, for example, the popularity of Indian films in Nigeria where Hausa youth adopt Indian fashions and music styles to avoid the ideological load of ‘becoming westerners’ (Larkin 2002). Similarly, there is an avid following for Latin American soap operas in Azerbaijan and Russia. In this case, the cultural product is a fictional genre that offers romantic gratification to a female public seeking escape from the monotony of housework and triviality of everyday life (Mattelart 1986). In Azerbaijan, despite previously high levels of female labour involvement, increasing unemployment and underemployment in the post-Soviet era have created a general sense of redundancy and marginalization for many urban women.4 Azeri women can also identify with the Latin female characters in these series who promote values of
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purity and virginity for girls, and sacrifice and self-denial for wives and mothers, values in line with traditional Azeri culture. However, globalization as a process that connects the world has also been shown to differentiate it, increasing inequalities, and bypassing and ignoring regions, as in many parts of Africa. A case in point is the polarization described by Ferguson (2002) in Zambian society as a consequence of the decline in world demand for its copper and the reversal of modernizing trends in the country (lowering of educational and health standards, decline in employment and growing urban–rural migration). For the former Soviet republics, it is particularly significant that the break-up of the Soviet Union and the transition to a free-market economy coincided with the worldwide intensification of economic and cultural globalizing processes. In this vast region of the world, those outside of pockets of new-found prosperity and economic opportunities live in what Ferguson described in the context of Zambia as conditions of ‘abjection’, that is, a reversal of the progress of the past few decades and a betrayal of the promises of modernization. Immense regional disparities and growing inequalities in wealth and access to consumer goods and western know-how are but one aspect of this. In Azerbaijan, nearly half the population (46.7 per cent) now live below the poverty level, with 10 per cent living in extreme poverty (State Statistical Committee of Azerbaijan 2003, cited in Asian Development Bank 2004: 3), and the average monthly income across the country is only US$56 (UNDP 2002: 32). There is thus a clearly observable and growing gap between Baku, with its increasing oil wealth manifested in the mushrooming of new, luxury high-rise buildings, and the rest of the country. Further, even in Baku itself, the massive and growing gap in levels of wealth and access to luxury goods and life style is visible in the difference in standards of housing and the kinds of shops used by the new rich (major entrepreneurs and those related to the Government) and the mass of salaried employees and petty traders.5 In post-Soviet Azerbaijan, gender norms and the position of women in the public and domestic spheres are further complicated by the impact of western consumerist ideology on the one hand, the Islamist projections of feminine ideals on the other hand, and an array of destabilizing social and political forces that have gripped the country since independence. One interesting outcome of all these changes is that, with the waning of Russian influence, ethnicity has become a far less significant determinant of gender norms and behaviour.6 This article discusses the changes affecting women’s identity and their gender and inter-generational relations in the light of the impact of conflicting ideologies and exogenous influences, such as the advent of the commercialization of sex, on women’s economic position and public presence. The contradictions that have ensued from processes of continuity and change have given rise to new gender asymmetries and new tensions in gender and family relations. The diversification of perceptions of femininity and gender norms is shown to have developed in tandem with the intensification of regional disparities, in particular the metropolitan – periphery divide, that has resulted from globalizing processes.7
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PARADOXES AND AMBIGUITIES OF THE SOVIET AZERI GENDER IDEOLOGY For Azerbaijanis in the past, as indeed for many peoples of the Soviet Union, ethnicity was a major factor in their everyday life, determining career, marriage, mobility choices and life chances (Brubaker 1994). In Baku, with its large Armenian and Russian populations, the sense of ethnic separateness was heightened by a number of factors: the different professional niches for different ethnic groups (especially for women); the geographical demarcation of their residential areas; and the distinct work ethics and sexual moralities (akhlaghiyat). This was accentuated by the fact that historically Russian and Armenian communities were the politically dominant forces in the country. Ethnic belonging and ethnic pride strongly informed the identity politics for the Azeri community in general, and for women in particular, since they were considered the custodians of custom and tradition, adat va anana (Tohidi 1996, 1998; Heyat 2000, 2002a). This reinforced the taboos on women’s public behaviour, with strong disapproval of smoking, driving a car, wearing trousers and consorting with or marrying non-Muslim men. Women’s appropriate comportment in observing gender and generational deference (kishiya va boyuga hurmat), acting with modesty and shame (hayali) and most of all observing namus (sexual honour), were all considered important markers of being Azeri. These were in turn related to the Islamic prescription on gender segregation, which contributed to Azeri women’s avoidance of jobs that brought them into close contact with unrelated men, such as in the service sector (discussed in the next section). In addition the highly developed tradition of hospitality (gonakhparvarlik), which entailed the provision of elaborate cuisine, relied almost entirely on women’s skills and labour. Given the importance of networking in realizing economic and political goals and the prominent place that entertaining and feasting occupied in this, women’s domestic responsibilities afforded them key roles in the conduct of social relations. At the same time, gonakhparvarlik further reinforced the unequal domestic division of labour so widely condemned as the contradictory aspect of the Soviet system’s ideology of gender equality (Einhorn 1993). The chastity required of Azeri women (with all its accompanying restrictions on female mobility and gender relations) was in fact in line with the official Soviet discourse of personal discipline that required propriety in male – female relations and public comportment – although this was much more rigorously promoted by the Party in Azerbaijan, in line with ethnic prescriptions (in turn related to Islamic codes of conduct and morality). Furthermore, under the Soviet system, the home and personal networks increasingly became the arena of self-fulfilment and assertion of individuality. These were also spheres where those elements of ethnic culture most at odds with official ideology could be expressed. Thus women’s greater role in running the household
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and maintaining ‘custom and tradition’ involved them in the reproduction of Azeri domestic ideals which confirmed hierarchies of age and gender. A poignant example of this was the display of hospitality towards distinguished male guests. On such occasions, the hostess simply acted as the cook and domestic servant, with children and other females of the household remaining out of sight. Interestingly, this pattern of behaviour is what strongly confirms the subordination of Azeri women in the eyes of foreign visitors (including the Iranians and Turks coming from the West). What is often hidden from their view is the superficial nature of such deference, which amounts to a display of subordination to men, contradicted in many other contexts. It was clear during my fieldwork that the deference shown to men at such times was at odds with the otherwise equal status that women were formally granted in legislation, educational opportunities and employment in many fields.8 Neither would many foreign visitors gain a clue to the influence and agency of women as wives and mothers, leading to a sense of empowerment. It was clear to me that women’s primary involvement with the home and the education of the children in addition to being breadwinners, equal in the eyes of the law, greatly enhanced their authority over their menfolk and especially the sons, whom they could control and call to account. This was particularly the case among the intelligentsia and the professional families. Women of this stratum of society were even more subject to the contradictory pressures of their community, and its imposition of restrictive codes of femininity, and the Soviet state’s requirement of their full participation in public life and the labour force. The paradoxical gender power relations that ensued also had wideranging political ramifications. As one of my informants, a former deputy minister in the last government of Soviet Azerbaijan, noted, the wives of politicians played key roles in the appointment or demotion of high officials, by lobbying their husbands. In his experience, if you were hoping to get a high-ranking job in a particular ministry, you had a much better chance if your wife/sister/mother was a friend of the wife of the minister involved, and conversely, you had little chance if the women had fallen out. Indeed, since family and personal networks were the major arenas for unofficial dealings, both in economy and politics, indirect channels of lobbying through wives (or husbands) and other close kin were effective means of influence. For Azeri women, being carriers of ethnic and national identity and custodians of tradition implied restrictions in their everyday life and adherence to a pattern of behaviour that reflected a culturally prescribed gender hierarchy and endorsed a discourse of male superiority. However, in many instances this was a performance, a part of their ethnic bargain, that is, a way of acting outwardly, zahirda, that did not necessarily correspond to the reality on the inside, icharida (Heyat 2002a: 166). The women’s inner nonconformity was expressed to me by one of my older informants, a lecturer
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in foreign languages at Baku State University, in the following account of her dealings with her husband: Often when I wanted to do something that my husband was not happy with I found a way of doing it so he couldn’t stop me. I did not much argue with him, especially in front of friends and relatives. It is our custom that a man’s word should rule. But a woman also does what she wants. She just has to find the right way to go about it. For example, when I was going on trips to Moscow or elsewhere in [the] USSR, to attend a conference or some other educational event, I would not discuss it beforehand with my husband. I would first arrange everything, buy my ticket, then inform him of it. That is because the first time I told him about going to Moscow alone, in 1972, he worried and fretted so much I almost gave up. He kept questioning how I would cope travelling on my own, a young woman alone in Moscow. What would people say?
The inner/outer duality that governs codes of appropriate speech and behaviour among Azeris has its parallels in other Middle Eastern societies (Gilsenan 1982; Beeman 1986). Moreover, under Soviet rule, an additional set of dualities was grafted onto this: the official/unofficial code that governed conduct, speech and human interaction at all levels in Soviet societies (Heyat 2002a: 39). One could in fact argue that the dualities governing many aspects of life in Azerbaijan had also permeated gender relations. The official/unofficial, Soviet/Azeri and state/community codes of conduct evolving over many decades indeed led to complex and ambiguous gender power relations. The ensuing paradoxical behaviour of Azeri women, however, reflected a more fluid system of thought and action than the simple dichotomous model of ‘Soviet in Public, Azeri in Private’ as stated by Tohidi (1996). The values and cultural norms arising from an ethnic Azeri origin also permeated the social domain guided by officialdom. For example, social relations in public life reflected a strong system of kinship and the prominence of elders. One study of Tajik women, who were similarly subject to the contrasting gender norms and ideals of the Soviet state and their own ethnic Muslim community, refers to their utilizing ‘gender masks’ as a coping mechanism (Harris 2004: 23). Women’s inner non-conformity is masked by their surface show of conformity and deference to those in positions of authority, above all the father figure. For Tajik society, confronted with the alien values of the governing Russian power, the preservation of Tajik identity very much relied on maintaining the difference with the Russians, particularly regarding feminine gender norms. In the case of Soviet Azerbaijan, women’s gender identity was similarly constructed primarily in contrast to the Russian ‘other’ (Tohidi 1996, 2000). In the post-Soviet era, however, with the weakening of ethnicity as a major determinant and Russia’s diminishing role, influences from the West and from neighbouring countries have increased identification with these countries. In independent Azerbaijan, with its free market economic
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imperatives and recent cultural influences, some of the old ambiguities in gender norms and relations are being eroded while new gender asymmetries are arising.
CHANGING FAMILIAL AND GENDER RELATIONS IN THE NEW ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE Since 1991, as in other former Soviet republics (Humphrey 1998) trading activity has replaced employment in industry and agriculture as the main source of income generation. Women have taken to trading activities on a large scale, mostly as a survival strategy and particularly in the retail sector, in terms of shuttle trade and as individual sellers of food products, household goods, clothing and other personal items. The consequent predominance of Azeri women as shop assistants and stall holders has led to this type of work no longer being considered morally dubious for women, although it is still of low social status, ashagha saviyye (Heyat 2002a, 2000b). Another rapid change in Azeri women’s employment pattern that has modified cultural attitudes regarding female public activity is their large-scale entry into areas of the service sector previously dominated by other ethnic groups. Prior to 1990, the Azeri community disapproved of females serving or entertaining a male public and the service sector was ethnically divided with regards to its female workforce. Armenians dominated skilled jobs such as dress-making, beauty services and hair-dressing, while Russian women were concentrated in jobs serving the public, such as in catering, hotels and stores, and entertainment. But with the departure of the Armenian community in 1990 and the emigration of most of the Russian community in the early 1990s, Azeri women by and large replaced these women. Since 1994, the service and trade sectors have expanded due to developments in the oil industry and increased foreign investment (Tohidi 1994; Heyat 2002b). This is especially the case in Baku where there is a much higher demand from foreign residents and the Azerbaijani nouveau riche. Banking, insurance, housing agencies, repair services, leisure, sporting, catering and entertainment facilities, stores and supermarkets have all greatly expanded, while images of western-style consumption have been reinforced via the electronic media and ease of travel and trading abroad. Meanwhile the importing of cheap electronic and computer products from the Gulf and the Far East has aided the modernization of business and use of new technologies. The demand for new skills has particularly benefited the young who have a greater facility for learning languages and computing skills. The proliferation of multinational corporations and foreign companies and NGOs in Baku has had a significant impact on the structure of the labour market, turning Baku into a magnet for economic opportunities and widening the gap in income levels and access to western know-how and languages. This has led to a privileged sector of employment connected with foreign
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companies and organizations employing mostly young people of professional middle-class families knowledgeable in western languages. Furthermore, since 1993, cultural and educational exchange programmes with the United States and the promotion of the English language through teaching and broadcasting services have resulted in fluency in English among a growing number of young people. In the late Soviet era in Azerbaijan, female education was highly valued and considered a family resource (Heyat 2002a: 127). Given this legacy, Azeri girls have been equally encouraged to participate in exchange programmes and thus have been able to take up employment in the administrative and financial sector of foreign or joint venture businesses and international organizations. This has resulted in an ironic situation among many middle-class professional families where sons and daughters, some in their late teens, earn regular wages far in excess of their highly qualified parents. For the young women involved, the ensuing economic empowerment may be expected to lead to a degree of autonomy and individualism in their gender and generational relations. However, this is mediated by the persistence of the tradition of communal families (family as a collective) directing and controlling the affairs of younger members. As in the case of central Asians (Harris 2004), though to a lesser extent, decisions concerning marriage, place of residence and career choices are still highly influenced by parents. This strong tradition of family as a collective has its antecedents in the nineteenth-century family communes, aile ijmasi (Heyat 2002a: 60). The tradition of a closely knit extended family striving to live in close proximity continued throughout the Soviet period, despite the formation of nuclear families (Hortacsu and Bastug 2000). The economy of shortages and the all-pervasive Soviet system of nepotism reinforced reliance on family members as the core of personal networks, essential for access to scarce resources and employment opportunities. In the free-market era of today, with the emergence of money as a medium of power and influence, the vast majority of the population still need to pool family resources as a means of survival, or to maintain a reasonable standard of living. This has led to continuity with the tradition of the closeknit extended family, in tension with the autonomy and individualism that young people, economically empowered through gaining new skills and languages, may seek to pursue. A paradoxical situation is created in Baku where it is not uncommon to find young people who live at home handing over their relatively high wages to their parents for the upkeep of the whole family, including siblings and grandparents, and simply receiving pocket money. The case of Yasmin Amirova and her family is an apt example here. Yasmin is a 25-year-old accountant with a master’s degree, who is fluent in English. She works for the subsidiary of an oil company earning five times the combined salary of her parents, a physician and an engineer with a PhD degree. Yasmin and her family of six, including two younger sisters and her grandmother, live in a two-bedroom apartment. Throughout her years of studying at the university and beyond, she has had to share the sitting room
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with her two sisters as their common bedroom. The crowded conditions leave little space for study or relaxation. The girls spend as much time as they can outside their home, at libraries, the workplace, cafes or with friends. The parents still keep a close watch on them, frequently enquiring about their whereabouts and constantly negotiating the boundaries of appropriate behaviour and gender norms expected of them. Recently Yasmin was joined by a new colleague at work, a young Russian woman. Her colleague could not understand why she would not rent an apartment of her own and perhaps live with a sister. ‘It is not our custom for young unmarried women to live alone’, Yasmin kept telling her colleague, echoing what her parents and relatives had reminded her whenever the issue had come up. Yasmin’s mother and aunt told me in discussion that they were aware of her frustrations. For example Yasmin had recently wished to purchase a fashionable, expensive item of clothing but had relinquished her wish since it would leave the family budget short and create disparity among the sisters. It was generally understood by the extended family and their friends that whatever was earned by Yasmin and her younger sister, also working, had to go into the common family fund, to be distributed according to each member’s needs. Although Yasmin’s family still maintain a supportive relationship, the postSoviet economic situation and the contradictions created in the intergenerational relations have led to new tensions and friction in family life for many people. Young people’s identity, as elsewhere in Central Asia, has been subjected to globalized notions of consumerism and individualistic fulfilment of ambitions and ideals, strongly influenced by the western media and images projected through movies and soap operas (Kuehnast 1998). This is in contrast to the Soviet ideals, held by the parents’ generation, of communal good and respect for intellectual achievement. The growing gap in generational attitudes and ideals is occurring in tandem with rising tensions in gender relations, as well-educated young women are becoming far more interested in careers than in marriage prospects. In recent interviews I held with a number of female students from Baku University, one of their major concerns was finding a husband who would not display strong jealousy towards his wife’s close contact with unrelated men. The notion of a working wife, they believed, particularly if financially successful, caused the husband to feel impotent. This was also the case in Soviet times, they told me, but it was counteracted by state ideology. In the independent era, however, those advocating male superiority and authority are free to voice such ideas in the public arena. At the same time, adherence to the ideal of the communal family with generational lines of authority led by a male figurehead, has come under great pressure from demographic, social and cultural changes that have arisen in consequence of economic breakdown and transition to the free market. In the first place, since 1993, following the war with Armenia, around 1 million Azeris (out of a population of 7.5 million) have become refugees – most of them internally displaced. At the same time, large numbers of Azeris, mostly men, have departed the country in search of jobs.9 These
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factors, along with the male casualties in the military conflict, have led to a drop in marriages and an increase in the number of single women. In 1997, the rate of marriage had halved compared to 1990 (10.5 per 1000), while the ratio of women who had never married had significantly increased, becoming the highest in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries (UNDP 1997: 81). Moreover, young unmarried women living in households with no male figurehead feel more at liberty to conduct a private life outside of parental control and the norms of feminine propriety expected of them. This is certainly the case in Baku where the influx of refugees and foreigners coupled with the loosening of social control by the state, in the form of surveillance by neighbours and colleagues, has heightened individual anonymity and mobility in public places. In this currently more diverse social environment, although the community of neighbours and relatives may still be observant of any aberrations from gender norms, there seems to be greater tolerance. In the provincial towns, however, there is little change with regards to the restrictions women face. Lack of employment and educational and training opportunities in the regions have reinforced their under-development, inhibiting changes in gender norms. Indeed the public presence of Azeri women in Baku has altered dramatically since my first visit there in 1992. This is in part related to the changes in employment patterns mentioned earlier, in that large numbers of ethnic Azeri women have entered jobs serving the public. It is also related to young women’s way of dress and comportment. Women in trousers are no longer the subjects of scorn; even the girls in skin-tight jeans and ultrashort skirts do not evoke reactions from passers-by as they may in many other Muslim cities. Similarly, women who smoke in public no longer confine themselves to beauty parlours, saunas or the ladies’ toilets in restaurants, theatres and the opera house. As western-style restaurants, cafes, bars and nightclubs have mushroomed in Baku (driving out traditional restaurants and teahouses), the presence of women in such establishments and in male company has become increasingly common. In the past, women only ventured into restaurants in the company of male relatives. Even in the universities and the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences cafeteria, women were rarely present and never alone or with a male colleague. Today this is still the case in provincial towns, where women’s presence is confined to the indoor life of the home, and their place of work or study. Streets and catering establishments are largely male domains. This liberalization of gender relations is born out of contrasting forces. In the case of young women from middle-class and professional families, their economic empowerment due to their education and knowledge of western languages, and their rising contact with western norms and values, has resulted in increased autonomy and greater confidence in dealing with men in public. For the less affluent, especially the new poor, the need to pursue survival strategies or simply to improve living standards has led to the relaxing of restrictions on young women’s interaction with men, either
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for work purposes or in pursuit of a husband. Thus working in a hotel, cafe´, restaurant or a bar is not frowned upon for girls from needy families. Having a boyfriend/male patron is also more readily tolerated, though still not publicly acknowledged by the women involved. But the most dramatic change in gender ideology is in the popular view of mixed marriages for women where material criteria seem to supersede ethnic preference. In the Soviet era, the marriage of Azeri women to non-Muslims was a matter of dishonour for the family and, in the rare cases of its occurrence, it often meant living in exile outside of Azerbaijan (Heyat 2002a: 162). Today, however, the most important factors considered in choosing a marriage partner are the wealth and the status of the man. Any marriage that would facilitate living in Europe or North America is considered favourably. The exceptions here are the elite and the new rich families who continue to follow the pattern of endogamous marriages, even for their sons. It can be argued that for this section of the population there is a greater continuity with past ethnic gender ideology, further accentuating gender roles as women of the new rich families are often confined to the domestic arena and the social circle of the kin group. Although marriage may be assumed to be the ideal conclusion to an intimate liaison between Azeri girls and foreign men, in reality more often on the agenda are sexual services offered for money or other financial gains. This relaxing of sexual morality and greater freedom of movement for young women should also be viewed in the context of demographic changes resulting from the large-scale emigration of men. In households with absent fathers and elder brothers, women gain greater autonomy. This is particularly significant in the context of a Muslim culture such as that of Azerbaijan in which guarding the chastity of women is a matter of sexual honour for men, their namus. Thus it may be argued that the loosening of male control in many households, along with other factors such as the high level of new poverty in the country, have set the scene for the commercialization of sex in a society previously very puritanical in its sexual mores.
COMMERCIALIZATION OF SEX IN THE FREE MARKET ERA The post-perestroika lifting of the taboo on sexual discourse and public images of sexuality led to an explosion of sexually explicit material in art, film, literature and the press in Russia (Shreeves 1992). Since the early 1990s, such material has permeated Azerbaijan, via the Russian television channels and imported videos and pornographic literature. This is particularly the case in Baku where there is widespread fluency in the Russian language, a hugely increasing disparity in levels of wealth and a growing market for sex as a commodity among the new rich and foreign male visitors. The ‘sex business’ is in fact a major attraction for Iranian, Turkish and Arab businessmen, and other male visitors from sexually stricter societies who possess greater
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buying power than most local men. Although the extent of prostitution perhaps has not reached the levels it has in Russia and other Slavic states, there has been none the less a proliferation of brothels and the emergence of street prostitution among young Azeri women, some in their early teens, which is quite shocking to most Azerbaijanis. Despite some public awareness of the related problem of venereal diseases and AIDS, there is as yet no significant government programme combating it.10 In the past, according to my informants, prostitution was a rare activity confined mostly to local Russian women. As elsewhere in the USSR, the KGB or secret police controlled the activities of prostitutes in bars and hotels, at times using them as informers. Today this Soviet legacy manifests itself in the way the police seem to be in collusion with those running the sex business. Generally the scale of kerb crawling and soliciting in bars, hotels and restaurants is deemed quite low compared to organized prostitution behind closed doors. According to some estimates, in 2002 there were over thirty brothels scattered around the city and its suburbs, ranging from the poorest ones in the outlying districts of the city to the very exclusive, elite places catering for the new rich and politically powerful clients (Heyat 2002a: 179). In addition, prostitution is increasingly exported abroad, mostly to Dubai and Turkey, where there are expectations of high earnings and the advantage of anonymity back home.11 But more common than kerb crawling or soliciting in bars and nightclubs are more covert forms of prostitution: brief sexual liaisons in exchange for gifts and cash. For some attractive and educated young women, more secure sexualized strategies involve finding lovers as sponsors or offering sex in addition to personal services or housekeeping duties for foreigners. In general, whether they are working in offices, studying at university or seeking start-up capital for a business, there are strong pressures on and temptations for young women to offer sexual favours to achieve their goals. Many Azerbaijanis consider the proliferation of illicit sex and commercialization of sexual relations to be an extension of the loosening of sexual morality in turn related to the impact of western films and images beamed through Turkish and Russian television, and more recently, the independent Azeri channels. In 1999 – 2000, Zerkalo, the highest circulation newspaper in Baku, published a series of articles on the state of prostitution in the city. When I questioned the commissioning editor, Kamal Ali, on the issue of growing commercialization of sex in the country, he responded as follows: In the Soviet era everyone knew that rich men kept mistresses. These were more often Russian or Armenian women. But since these communities have left, our women have filled their places [as indeed they have in the shops, restaurants and bars]. But women here have to be careful if they conduct affairs, especially if they are married. Their relatives and neighbours would strongly condemn it. The community still has a firm control over individuals and illegitimate sexual liaisons are highly disapproved of. But all this may be changing with the cultural
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influences that are penetrating here from abroad, damaging our akhlaghiyat, morality. Still, I think it is inevitable that as we get closer to the West and wish to integrate with Europe the problems of those societies as well as the benefits will affect us. Only, the government should take control and make provisions to minimise the spread of venereal diseases.
This relating of the breakdown in sexual morality to integration with Europe is an idea that has widespread currency among educated Azeris. For the new poor and those struggling for mere subsistence, however, the economic and social factors underlying the commercialization of sexuality are quite evident. These include the breakdown of social and community controls in the wake of large-scale population displacements (including rural as well as refugee influx into Baku). Nevertheless, the question of identification with the West is reinforced through strong contact with Turkey (in the form of tourism, student exchanges and businesses) and the output of Turkish television channels in Azerbaijan. The programmes broadcast by these channels are mostly musical and talk shows, populated by European-looking, glamorous, blonde, Turkish women. Russian television channels also broadcast a steady flow of blonde feminine images dressed in the latest European fashions. For young Azeri women today, modernity, muasirlik, has become synonymous with looking European, reflected in the cult of slimness (contrasting with their mothers’ overweight generation) and in the style of dress, hair and make-up. At the same time, an odd contrast is provided by the Iranian Channel where most programmes are presented by unsmiling, veiled women. These broadcasts have very few viewers, especially in Baku. None the less the Islamic values and norms of femininity they promote do attract a minority of women who adhere to wearing the hijab, Islamic covering, in public. The sight of veiled women on the streets of Baku, while relatively few in number, does signal expectations of femininity different to that advocated by western-oriented, consumerist culture. It reflects the diversification in perceptions of femininity in the post-Soviet era. What affords western images their potency is the power and prestige associated with the West, and the USA in particular. For most Azerbaijanis, given their history of colonialism under the Russians and their subordination within the Soviet Union, there is a paradoxical attraction to the western model of society. This model is based on advanced capitalism offering a relative abundance of material wealth, consumer choice and personal and political freedom, in contrast to the shortages and repression of the past. But there are aspects of western society that are at odds with Azeri religious and ethnic values: the breakdown in sexual morality, drug abuse, weakening of kin solidarity and loss of authority of the elders. These divergences from Azeri morality are further highlighted by the teachings of Islamic groups and charities, and the broadcasting on Azerbaijani television of religious programmes during the holy months of Ramazan and Muharram. In the popular view, Islamist activities offer a counterbalance to the ‘corrupting’ influences of the
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West. Over the past decade, Muslim charity organizations from Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have established a foothold through building and renovating mosques and shrines, setting up religious schools or madrasas and offering religious literacy courses. These organizations promote the doctrine of the particular Islamic sect to which their sponsoring body adheres. Often aid and welfare provision is connected to these activities, reinforcing their missionary agendas. They consequently find a greater following among the urban poor and the refugee population. The activities and missionary goals of Islamist groups should in fact be viewed in the context of modern Azeri culture and society, which has been subjected to seventy years of an atheistic education system and state ideology. During the decades of Soviet rule in Azerbaijan, religion in its institutional form was greatly weakened and religious knowledge mostly lost. What continued was a general sense of faith in God, a Muslim identity, and certain customs and rituals associated with Islam (Heyat 2002a: 106). The city of Baku was closely associated with a secular tradition, while the surrounding villages and the southern regions, near the Iranian border, maintained a degree of religiosity. This has meant that, for example, the Muslim Women’s Society, which promotes veiling and Islamic codes of conduct for women, has had far more success in the southern regions of Azerbaijan than in Baku. Generally, the Islamist groups advocate piety as a bulwark against the insecurities and vulnerabilities generated in the post-Soviet era. Sexual licentiousness and the serious rise in prostitution are depicted as manifestations of degeneration in society, their roots traced back to the godlessness, Allahsizlik, of the Soviet system. As in the case of Turkey (Acar 1991), it is the lower-income women of provincial and rural origin who are the targets and recipients of the Islamist message.
CONCLUSION In Azerbaijan, the process of modernization under the Soviet system, and women’s emancipation as a dimension of this, led to paradoxical developments in gender relations and in women’s public and private role and position. It may be argued that the liberalization of gender norms and expectations of womanhood in certain sectors of society in the post-Soviet era have their roots in that historic process. As such, globalization in Azerbaijan may be viewed as a follow-up process to late modernity, as has been argued elsewhere (Lewellen 2002: 9) – although this is a much broader and ongoing debate, which goes beyond the scope of the present article. What is clear is that the array of identities that have evolved in the independent republic transcend the Soviet/Azeri and official/unofficial dualities that governed society in the past. While Islam and nationalism are potent forces directing Azeri society, it is consumerist individualism, oriented towards Europe and the West generally that has had a growing impact on the identities
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of Azeri men and women, particularly in the capital, Baku. The paradoxical attraction to a western model of society is especially significant for young people, most of whom no longer compare and contrast themselves with Russians as the most significant ‘other’. The departure of the Armenian community along with the great reduction in the numbers of Russians has removed the socio-politically dominant forces in Azeri society and the need for ethnic competition. But despite the weakening of ethnicity as a determinant in gender norms, the post-Soviet resurgence of nationalism and search for cultural authenticity has contributed to a degree of continuity with ethnic Azeri norms that has varied with region and social status. Furthermore, with Russia’s diminishing role in the country, Turkey, Iran, the USA and Western Europe have become increasingly involved in the economic and social life in Azerbaijan. Thus, in the absence of an all-encompassing state doctrine, gender norms and perceptions of femininity have greatly diversified. However, heightened expectations of gender and generational rights, freedom and equality in the context of ethnic Azeri norms, economic hardship and social upheaval have led to increased tension and strife in family life. At the same time, the impact of developments in the globalized oil industry located in the Baku region, and its effects on the expanding service sector, has led to a rapidly growing gap in levels of income and employment opportunities between this region and the rest of the country. Growing wealth differentials confirm what has often been claimed as a worldwide impact of economic globalizing processes. On the cultural level there is also an increasing divide as patterns of consumption, life styles, tastes and notions of propriety concerning women’s comportment, dress and interaction with men are beginning to vary greatly. For example, the sight of young women in very short skirts strolling the streets of central Baku and frequenting cafes in the company of male friends is no longer an oddity, while elsewhere in the provinces the restrictive ethnic Azeri norms regarding women’s demeanour, dress and association with men are still very much in evidence. Indeed the state of gender ideology in the present free market post-Soviet era in Azerbaijan is muddled by the rise of consumerism promoted by western images and advertising on the one hand, and diminished economic means and lack of welfare on the other. This schism between desire and means has strong class, status and regional determinants akin to what developed in the 1960s and 1970s under the Shah in Iran, and elsewhere in many Muslim Middle Eastern countries. At the time in Iran, the growing economic and cultural gulf between the westernized middle and upper classes and the urban poor played a crucial role in the evolving of the Islamic revolution. This is arguably not a very likely prospect for Azerbaijan, with its history of atheism and the reservations felt by most Azerbaijanis towards an Islamic state. Nevertheless, there is some similarity in the way Islamic perceptions of womanhood, feminine conduct and gender segregation have found currency, in contrast to westernized images of women and liberal sexual attitudes. This has further diversified gender norms and ideology across society.
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In the absence of an official doctrine of gender equality and protective measures to safeguard women’s rights, the complex and ambiguous gender power relations that evolved under the Soviet system are giving way to a more ‘traditional’ system of subordination of women, attenuated by class position and social status. For a small minority of well-educated young women there are new economic opportunities and the potential for greater autonomy and mobility than in the past. This is mediated by the continuity in the strong tradition of closely knit family, reinforced through economic factors: a contradiction arising from economic globalization. For the majority, however, there are many diverse pressures, such as returning to hearth and home, or resorting to sexual strategies as means of survival and advancement. Globalization as a cultural and economic process has indeed accentuated the growing social divisions and differentials in wealth and status, leading to a major schism in gender ideology and expectations of womanhood in Azerbaijan. Farideh Heyat 49A, Park Hall Road London, N2 9PY, UK E-mail: fh1@soas.ac.uk
Notes 1
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Prior to Stalin’s rule and the sealing of the border with Iran, there had been a great deal of trade, migration and close contact between the two Azerbaijans (Swietochowski 1995). Later in the 1940s and 1950s, there were waves of Iranian communist refugees settling in Soviet Azerbaijan. Baku was the centre of oil industry in the Russian Empire attracting European entrepreneurs as well as oil workers from Iran and all over the Caucasus. This contributed to the industrial development and immense wealth in the city, enhancing its cosmopolitan population and culture. In the Soviet era, the city continued to be prosperous and highly multi-ethnic. It was famed across the USSR as a centre for music and art. See, for example, Featherstone et al. (1995); Appadurai (1996); Tomlinson (1999); Inda and Rosaldo (2002). By the end of the Soviet era, 1989, women in Azerbaijan constituted 43 per cent of those in public employment and 46 per cent of the highly and semi-specialized professionals. However, in the post-Soviet era with the decline of the state sector, unemployment among women has been increasing, in particular among young women (in the 18–30 age group). For more details see Heyat (2002a: 170). There is a large differential in the salaries of public- and private-sector employees. For example, a school teacher or a doctor earns US$20 –50 per month, while local employees of foreign companies and organizations, some in their early twenties, often earn US$500 –1,000 per month.
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6
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Azeri population in the city of Baku was a minority, with Russians and Armenians forming the politically dominant groups. Later the Azeri population increased, reaching a majority in 1970. Following conflict with Armenia (1990 –1), the great majority of the Armenian population fled the country. In the few years after independence most of the Russian population, in particular the young, migrated to Russia. 7 The field research for this article was initially undertaken for my PhD thesis in 1994 –5, and then intermittently in 1996 and 1997. It involved extensive lifehistory interviews with twenty-three women of different generations, participant observation and literature research. During subsequent study visits in April– May 2000 and March –April 2004, I conducted further observations and interviews with key informants and focus groups. 8 Despite the formal gender equality in employment there were significant differentials in men and women’s rate of pay, and career choices were limited by cultural constraints. In education, however, there was far greater equality; girls from rural areas would come to Baku to receive higher education, though most families were reluctant to send their unaccompanied daughters to Russia (Heyat 2002a). 9 Over the past decade there has been large-scale migration of Azerbaijanis, mostly male labour migration, to FSU (Former Soviet Union) republics and, to a lesser extent, to Turkey and elsewhere. Informal accounts estimate over 2 million Azeris are currently living and working in the Russian Federation. 10 Although HIV prevalence remains very low (less than 0.3 per cent) in most of Central Asia and the Caucasus, the overall number of registered infections continues to rise. According to UN reports (UNAIDS 2004), one in four drug injectors in Baku has been found to be HIV-positive. Among street-based sex workers, the rate is 11 per cent, and those working out of cafes and saunas 6 per cent. 11 According to the Azerbaijan Women’s Rights Defence Association (formerly affiliated with the Popular Front), in 1999 there were 6,000 Azeri prostitutes working in Turkey and 2,000 in Dubai.
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