Women’s Political Empowerment in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan

Elena Maltseva ()
Additional contact information
Elena Maltseva: University of Windsor

Chapter Chapter 15 in Gendering Post-Soviet Space, 2021, pp 333-357 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter examines the factors that contributed to women’s political mobilization in Kazakhstan in recent years and assesses the implications of this trend for the country’s political and social institutions. Using the framework of social grievances and political opportunities, the chapter argues that changing socioeconomic conditions, coupled with the growing frustration among women over their inability to influence the policy-making process due to the closed structure of Kazakhstan’s political institutions, as well as the renewed interest in the feminist ideas among the younger generation of Kazakhstani women and the rise of social media are the factors that best explain the recent wave of women’s activism in Kazakhstan. The implications of women’s collective action for the country’s social and political institutions are significant. If sustained, it has the potential to reshape the state of gender relations in modern Kazakhstan and liberalize the country’s political institutions. The study is based on extensive research conducted by the author in Kazakhstan between 2014 and 2019, including interviews with female activists, as well as a comprehensive review of primary and secondary literature on the topic.

Keywords: Kazakhstan; Central Asia; Social movements; Women’s empowerment; Democratization; Feminism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-15-9358-1_15

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789811593581

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-9358-1_15

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().