Gender issues in the development of rural areas in Kazakstan

The research on which this thesis is based investigated the significance of gender in the agrarian reform and farrn restructuring process which has been conducted in Kazakhstan since 1991. Through detailed ethnographic study of rural communities, it explored how the macro level framing of rural development policy as privatisation was impacting on gender relations at micro level and how gender was interwoven with the emerging patterns of social and economic stratification. The thesis argues that farm privatisation has been a gendered process. On one level, taking 'privatisation' in a primary sense, as a planned programme of structural change, the redistribution of land and assets is having specific consequences for women in terms of entitlement and property rights. On another level, privatisation can also be understood in a second, broader, sense, as a shift in the balance between public (state) and private (domestic) spheres. From this perspective, the corollary of the withdrawal of the state as a provider of employment and services in rural areas is that households are increasingly reliant for survival on the 'private' resources of family, kin and social networks of various kinds. Local ideas about gender roles, that I term the 'rural gender contract', have been instrumental in shaping how women and men have been affected by and reacted to these changes. At the same time, the 'rural gender contract' itself has been challenged by them. The thesis thereby contributes to the emerging anthropological literature on postsocialist societies, which explores how communities and individuals are experiencing radical transformation and how their reactions are shaping local strategies and economies in ways often unforeseen by policy makers.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Wolverhampton

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Shreeves, Rosamund

Licence

• https://wlv.dspace7.openrepository.com/bitstreams/ca84421b-938f-4db7-8e25-3d25a757892f/download