Lost Voices Central Asian Women Confronting Transition by Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes (London and New York: Zed Books, 2005. 208 pages.)

Abstract

Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes’ Lost Voices: Central Asian Women Confronting
Transition examines how the Soviets empowered and disempowered Central
Asian women before, during, and after the communist regime. To date, this
book is the most in-depth study of the revolutionary transformations experienced
by these women during the twentieth century. Combining her western
academic background and sensitivity for the local context, she reaches
beyond the mainstream conceptualization of gender issues vis-à-vis the
Soviet regime to examine Central Asian and western literature on gender thematics
across disciplines, from anthropology to political science.
The book opens with a sophisticated analysis of the relation between
western feminist paradigms and the Soviet policy of gender equality. Both
existed in parallel, yet were interactive. Although western feminist ideas
impacted women from the Soviet space, they represented rather marginal
views among Soviet feminists. Corcoran-Nantes explains that while the
Soviet regime was empowering Central Asian women by liberating them
from traditional religious values and setting quotas in public structures, these
radical shifts in daily life inevitably complicated their identities in various
social situations. The Soviet model provided some institutional framework
for the independence period, yet was largely inadequate in the new free market
system. As a result, Central Asian women faced greater problems in
shaping their feminist agendas when compared to Russian women.
Chapter 2 discusses why this forceful emancipation, which involved
khujun (unveiling), replacing Islamic law with Soviet legislation, and establishing
zhensovets (women councils) in the 1920-30s, was controversial. She
argues that women were expected to follow the changes, yet still had to play
important social roles in their families. In addition, this empowerment provoked
domestic and social violence against women. Such phenomena as
khujun also engendered intra-personal conflict and hesitation among the first
generation of Soviet-ruled Central Asian women. Corcoran-Nantes states
that the “emancipation of Central Asian women had far more to do with the
implementation of the Soviet political and economic project than constituting
an act of altruism” (p. 38) ...