Agency within Subordination : Tajik Women's Experiences with Arranged Marriages

ISBN-13: 9783639136180 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 76 str.

Ekaterina Frolova

Opis

Investigating particularly the question of arrangedmarriages in the context of independent Tajikistan,this work provides insights into various forms ofoppression that shape Tajik women s lives, while atthe same time trying to show that although women inTajikistan are being discriminated against in manyways, they nevertheless manage to manoeuvre behindthe scenes and affect outcomes. The present workattempts to reach beyond the misinformation orapprehension of arranged marriages per se and,instead, tries to understand the cultural, social andeconomic context in which such marriages take place.The particular interest of the present work is toexplore Tajik women s agency in order to see whatforms it takes both when women face the pressure toaccept a marriage and afterwards. The book provides arather small, but fascinating collection of women snarratives about their experiences with arrangedmarriages. The present work and the stories narratedwithin it is written in an attempt to challenge thevictimization discourses about Tajik women and toinvestigate the coping strategies and techniques thatthese women adopt and use in order to obtain (more)power.

O autorze

Ekaterina Frolova holds a Diploma in English Linguistics from the
Russian-Tajik (Slavic) University in Dushanbe and a Master of
Arts in Gender Studies from the Central European University in
Budapest. She is a specialist in gender and migration research
and is currently enrolled as a researcher at the University of
Bern.