CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Kobayashi, Reika |
|---|---|
| Title | Contesting Gender Roles: Shifts in the Lives of Women in Kazakhstan and Their Representation in Soviet Periodicals during Perestroika, 1985-1991 |
| Summary | Women’s roles and social status in Kazakhstan have undergone significant historical transformations, shaped initially by nomadic customs and gender norms. When the Bolsheviks came to power, Kazakh women became targets of “modernisation” policies and were exposed to Soviet-style education. As a result, Kazakh women seemingly enjoyed equal rights with men throughout the Soviet period. Amidst this backdrop, the economic, political, and sociocultural reforms introduced during Gorbachev’s perestroika (1985–1991) significantly affected women in Kazakhstan. This thesis examines how these reforms affected women’s roles and status, and how these shifts were represented in Soviet periodicals, by analysing articles from those publications. This thesis identifies several key findings. The introduction of the market economy tended to exclude women from productive labour, although some began participating in newly emerging cooperatives. The liberalisation of speech under glasnost (openness) enabled discourse in the public sphere on patriarchal gender norms rooted in the pre-Soviet era. At the same time, alternative beauty standards emphasising consumerism and physical appearance began to emerge. This period witnessed rising ethnic consciousness and the spread of Islam, with some women and magazines actively engaged in this process. However, these changes did not occur overnight; rather, perestroika was marked by the coexistence of typical Soviet gender roles and their emerging counterparts. Additionally, even in the late 1980s, Kazakh women faced economic and social disparities compared to Slavic women, particularly Russians. They often worked in low-paid, low-skilled, and inadequate environments, revealing a stark status contrast. These findings contribute to a more complex understanding of how Kazakh women —marginalised by ethnicity, region, and gender—engaged with and were affected by the transformations of the perestroika period, thereby offering a multilayered perspective to existing studies. |
| Supervisor | Tatsumi, Yukiko; Siefert, Marsha |
| Department | Historical Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/kobayashi_reika.pdf |
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