Has it really been two weeks? I can’t believe that my first month is more than half over! Time really dragged for the couple days before classes started, but now it’s just flying by – I’m always so busy with schoolwork or vocabulary increasing or tea drinking…
But, having been here for 17 days, I thought I’d talk a bit about gender in Tajikistan. I’ve gotten a lot of questions on that, and thought I’d try to help everyone understand. I’m fascinated by the gender roles in Tajikistan. As in most countries “over here” (Thanks, Shelby Jamerson, for those words), there’s a big divide between what’s expected of women, and what’s expected of men. Unlike many Central Asian countries, though, this divide is definitely more a cultural thing than a legal or even a religious thing. While most women I’ve seen on the street (and in my family) wear headscarves, I haven’t been, and there are definitely some Tajik women who don’t cover their hair either. While they do generally wear traditional Tajik dresses – and I’m hoping to have one made for myself too! – that are nearly floor length, and worn with matching pants underneath, always cover the shoulders and are very often long-sleeved, I’ve been getting the impression that the stares I get as I walk down Rudaki Avenue (the main street in Dushanbe, where nearly everything is located) are more due to my (somewhat wild) red hair and obviously white skin than the fact that my skirt comes only to my knee and that I sometimes give in to the heat and uncover my shoulders. No one – not even my host family, who might be expected to correct any of my cultural faux pas’ – has ever mentioned to me that I might be dressed inappropriately, and I don’t ever feel unsafe on the streets… especially with all the Russians wandering around, who really don’t adhere to Tajiki dress codes at all. =)
Of the women in my family, the oldest daughter works (though I don’t know what she does). She doesn’t live with us, but, as I think I’ve mentioned, she comes by every morning for breakfast to drop off her two young children, and returns for dinner until late at night when she brings her kids home. The second oldest sister used to work (as a secretary, I think) when she and her husband lived in Uzbekistan, but for now, while she is staying with us, she’s at home. The third oldest sister doesn’t work – at least not right now; she’s just had a baby – but she did attend University, so maybe she will work at some point in the future. My youngest sister is only 15, so she’s still in school, but she’s dreaming now of going to the US or to Russia to study fashion after she graduates. My host mother does not work, and, as far as I can tell, spends her days relentlessly cleaning every inch of the house (today, I awoke to her shining my doorknob) and making sure that the food constantly out on the table never gets depleted.
My sister Galya, the one who has just had a baby and has been living with her parents for the past 40 days, but is leaving today to return to her husband’s house, talked to me a lot about being female in Tajikistan on my first night here. She seems to me to be kind of at the mercy of her in-laws, especially her mother-in-law, and of Tajik society. She told me that she didn’t want to get married so young (she was 21 when she married her husband), and she doesn’t feel ready to be a mother, but that society here dictates that women get married in their very early 20’s and have children immediately afterwards. She loves her husband, and they were friends for a long time before they got married, but his family, she says, is quite strict so she doesn’t get to visit her family very often. Once, I came home to find a gaggle of women eating in the courtyard, and Galya introduced them to me as her husband’s family (his mother, sister, and aunt, but not him), and invited me to sit and eat with them, but she herself spent the meal waiting on her in-laws.
On the streets, women keep their eyes down if they are walking alone, and never speak to men they do not know, and vice versa. When we went to the mountains last week, while we were walking along the road, we accidentally ended up in somebody’s yard. A little boy came out of the house and we explained what we were doing. His father came out and introduced himself to and shook the hands of the two guys in our group, but completely ignored Amanda and I. It wasn’t a rude thing, but actually a respectful thing – men would never talk to a strange woman they weren’t interested in starting a relationship with. I also have a host brother who still hasn’t introduced himself to me, but I rarely see him anyway, so that really doesn’t bother me so much anymore.
All that being said, I feel very lucky to be a host daughter in this country, especially with my particular family. My four host sisters and host mother, are together whenever they are home, but from what I can tell, my host father and brother live pretty solitary lives. I don’t know where they go when they are not in the courtyard, but I see my host father and once in a blue moon my host brother for dinner, but beyond that, they never seem to be around. The women also throw lunch parties and have female friends over nearly everyday, and when I come home in the early afternoon, there’s a good chance that a group of women will be gathered around plates and plates of food in the courtyard, eating and gossiping away. The same goes for after we finish a meal in our family – my host brother and father stay at the table until they are finished, then they get up and leave to do manly things on their own, and the women – usually four sisters plus mother plus me, and my little host niece (and nephew too, I guess) – stay at the table for several hours laughing and talking and drinking tea and eating cookies. It’s like playing tea party, but for real, and it’s such a wonderful sense of community that I would probably miss out on if I were a male visitor in the family. While I’m not really getting a sense of what it’s like to be a Tajik woman (I’m not expected to cook or clean, but hopefully once my Tajiki gets better and my being in the kitchen won’t be such a hassle for everyone else, I’ll help cook too), I do feel like I’m getting the best of both worlds.
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