Tag Archives: women

22 Sep

Gender equality in Azerbaijan

Here are the results of analysis about attitudes toward gender issues in Azerbaijan.

The upper left graph about women and work is particularly
interesting. Women and men tend to agree on these items, except that men
are more likely to believe that university education is more important
for a boy than a girl and men think that men make better business
executives.

The upper right hand graphic looks at women and jobs and there was
more disagreement. Over half of Azerbaijani women believe that having a
job is the best way for a women to be independent, while only a third of
men do. As for the 29% of men that disagree that having a job is the
best way for a woman to be independent, it would be interesting to know
what they do believe is the best way for independence.

Only a quarter of Azerbaijan women think that it is problematic when a
woman earns more than her husband, but over a third of men believe
this.

And when jobs are scarce, over two-thirds of Azerbaijani men believe
men have more of a right to a job than women, while a little under half
of women feel this way.

The lower right corner graph looks at attitudes about gender roles.
For the most part Azerbaijani men and women were in agreement except
significantly more men think that men should have the final decision
making power in the home. Also, more men believe that gender equality
has been reached in Azerbaijan. Notably, nearly all Azerbaijanis think
that women should be responsible for diapering, bathing, and feeding
children.

Finally, in the lower left is skills that Azerbaijanis were taught as
children or teenagers. Nearly all Azerbaijani women were taught to
prepare food, clean the house and the bathroom, wash clothing, and care
for younger siblings.

There were very strong differences between men and women in nearly all activities except for caring for younger siblings.

Men were also more likely to be taught to grocery shop, drive, and fix home appliances.

Very few Azerbaijan women were taught to drive as teenagers.

Full version here.

22 Sep

Please help support our research project

I am incredibly lucky to have some amazing research collaborators and friends. For the project that I’m about to describe, I’m working with three women who rock my world. Two of them are also academic mommies of young kids (together we have 5 kids under age 6), two are non-native English speakers working in English at a near native proficiency – which is awesome, and all three are great and funny friends who work exceptionally hard and are passionate about creating positive change in the region. Two are also well known gender and digital activists in the region while the other two are American academics with over a decade of involvement in the region. We are all deeply concerned about inequalities in the region, especially for women.

We are all also interested in the role that technology can play in helping to better the region.

So, with that gushing out of the way, I want to share with you our (Sarah Kendzior, Jale Sultanli, and Arzu Geybullayeva) research proposal.

Last year in running the normal analyses on the Caucasus Barometer to see what percentage of the population has access to certain technologies, I noticed that ONCE AGAIN Azerbaijan lagged behind Armenia and Georgia. This seems strange because they’re, on the whole, wealthier – and wealth is the primary predictor for technology ownership.

What I soon realized is that one of the reasons that Azerbaijanis are less likely to own and use technologies is that there are huge gender discrepancies.

I was really saddened by this and after sharing my findings with these wonderful women, we began chatting through social media channels and privately (sometimes in person, sometimes digitally) about these issues. We were all worried about this problem and what it means for Azerbaijan today and in the future.

We talked about trying to pull together a research proposal but we were all quite busy. I’ve been starting a new academic position, Jale moved to an entirely new country while working on her PhD, Sarah has been transitioning out of academia, and Arzu, as usual, has her hands in many projects. Sarah and I are also working on a few other projects regarding Internet in Azerbaijan (as we have in the past), but none with a gender lens.

But then we saw that Freedom House was hosting a contest for projects related to Internet freedom with public voting. I immediately emailed my lovely friends and suggested that this could be the opportunity that we’ve been waiting for to explore the question of what is going on with women and the Internet in Azerbaijan.

So we worked on our proposal and now we need your help.

Our idea is to run a series of focus groups in Azerbaijan to talk to women (and men) about what’s going on with women and the Internet. We’ll also conduct some interviews. After our analysis we’re going to disseminate the findings in an advocacy campaign.

You can vote on our project once a day for this entire week. Here’s the voting site. Please share.

I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to work on such an important project with such amazing collaborators. We greatly appreciate your support.

Here are some images I made to promote it.

kids

kids

kids

08 Jul

Central Asian Women

While CRRC is known for its Caucasus Barometer, in Winter 2011, a Central Asian survey was conducted to look at access to justice in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. (Here are the data files and methodological notes.)

These analyses are only on the issues related to women in Central Asia. There is a lot more in this dataset.

Central Asian women

View more presentations from Katy Pearce.
07 Jul

Some brief insights into the state of women in Armenia

With recent reports about sex ratio imbalance in Armenia, a quick analysis of the Caucasus Barometer brings insight into the state of women in Armenia.

Armenians certainly prefer boys, especially in rural areas. But even in regional cities and Yerevan, nearly half of Armenians state a preference for a boy.

Moreover, Armenians (and Azerbaijanis and Georgians) raise their boys and girls differently, as shown in the slide.

And once a woman has grown up, few Armenians are comfortable with her living apart from her family if she is unmarried. There is slightly greatly acceptance of this idea among capital females though. (And in the near future, I’ll look at this vis-a-vis age!)

Sex before marriage is widely viewed as unacceptable in Armenia, but again capital females are slightly more tolerance of the idea. (And again, I need to look at this vis-a-vis age.)

However, living together before marriage has SOME acceptance amongst Yerevantsis, but overall the practice is viewed as unacceptable.

So all-in-all, do Armenians think that men or women have a better life? Interestingly, the results are mixed and there aren’t great regional or gender differences.

Gender

View more presentations from Katy Pearce.