Irad WikiThe Free Encyclopedia

Women in Irad

From Irad Wiki, the free encyclopedia

The position of women in Irad differs sharply on either side of the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line. In the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ), the statutes of the American territorial period give women equal civil rights, and women vote, study, work and hold office; the territory's second elected Governor, Nurgul Abdrakhmanova, was a woman. In the Autonomous Tribal Regions (ATR), clan life is governed by customary law (adat), under which women cannot serve as judges (biys), are not delegates to the Kurultai and inherit little.[1][2]

Bride kidnapping (ala kachuu) survives in some tribal districts and parts of the rural ISEZ, and human rights groups count it among the most serious abuses of women's rights in Irad. It became a specific criminal offense in the ISEZ in 2017 after a campaign by women's groups. The Syro-Iradi Catholic Church, to which most Iradis belong, condemns it.[3]

History

Iradi tradition gives a woman the central place in the nation's origin. Janyl, venerated by the church as St. Janyl, Mother of Irad, is by tradition the 11th-century founder of the Iradi church, and the oral The Epic of Janyl is about a warrior woman who unites the clans; historians dispute her historicity.[4] Communities of women attached to the Order of St. Janyl the Hermit are recorded from the late 19th century, when sisters ran a school for girls in Iyık Janyl.

In the early Soviet period Zarina Alimbekova organized literacy classes for women in the Talas valley for the women's department of the Communist Party and in 1924 founded the first secular boarding school for Iradi girls, in Talas. The short-story writer Aisuluu Bayalinova (1906–1941) wrote about women on the collective farms; she was arrested in 1937 and died in a camp.[5] After the Church of St. Janyl was closed in 1937 and its bells broken up for metal, older women of Iyık Janyl kept the custom of climbing Cathedral Hill at the old hours of prayer for the rest of the Soviet period, an image taken up in later songs (see Bells of Saint Janyl).[6]

Law and politics

Irad Special Economic Zone

The ISEZ is a secular state whose civil liberties rest on the Organic Act of the Territory of Irad and the territorial statutes. Marriage is a civil contract registered under the Domestic Relations Act of 1996, with a minimum age of 18, and civil divorce has been available since the territorial period.[7] Citizens resident in the ISEZ, men and women alike, may vote from the age of 18.[8] International Women's Day, 8 March, kept from the Soviet calendar, is a public holiday.

Nurgul Abdrakhmanova, a lawyer, was Speaker of the Territorial House of Representatives from 1998 to 2002 and Governor from 2003 to 2006, the first woman in the office.[9] Women prominent in public life since 2007 include the trade unionist Elena Petrova, a Nurzhan city councilor first elected in 1997, whom unions have floated as a candidate for 2027; the lawyer Gulnara Sadyk, who founded the Legal Defense Guild in 2009; Nazira Abdykadyr, one of the two lawyers behind the 2026 Supreme Court petition on the Governor's capacity; and Elmira Beishenova, editor of the Talas Herald since 2009. Anara Toktarova, the Governor's wife, holds no government post but is the public face of the children's charity founded in her name in 2008.[10] Women serve as volunteers in the State Defense Corps, mainly in signals, medical and logistics posts, and made up about 9 percent of its personnel in 2022 (see Armed Forces of Irad).

Autonomous Tribal Regions

Under adat as practiced by the clans, women are not admitted as biys and rarely speak at hearings, daughters and widows inherit little or nothing under patrilineal rules, and widows and women heads of household cannot bring claims in their own name before the Autonomous Tribal Grazing Arbitration Tribunal.[1][11] Women are not delegates to the Kurultai, the clans' assembly on the Aksay Plateau. Since 2021 a women's council meeting alongside it may send written petitions, which the secretary of the Iradi Freedom Society Chancellery reads to the assembly. Klara Zhumabek kyzy, sister of the Tanıp chief Bektur Zhumabek uulu, has argued for women's full participation. Human Rights Watch has criticized the exclusion of women; defenders of the system say that parish priests who sit with the elders temper its harsher rules.[2] Women serve as scouts, medics and couriers in some detachments of the El-Choro Militias.

Marriage and family

Main article: Marriage in Irad

In the ATR marriages are usually arranged by the two families, the groom's family paying a bride price (kalym) and the bride's family providing a dowry (sep) of felt carpets and bedding; in the cities most couples choose each other and the kalym is a token. After the wedding the groom's mother places the white elechek headdress on the bride, the sign of a married woman in the countryside. A woman keeps her own patronymic (kyzy, "daughter of") after marriage, and urban women's surnames take the ending -ova, or in Talas usage often the bare stem (see Iradi name).[12] The church does not recognize divorce and grants only declarations of nullity.

In a 2021 survey by the Talas State University Institute of Sociology and the St. Luka Community Health Mission, 13 percent of married women under 50 in surveyed parts of the Talas Alatau and Karatau planning zones said their marriage had begun with an abduction, about half of them against their will; the figure was under 2 percent in the three ISEZ cities.[13] In 2014 the bishops' pastoral letter On the Free Consent of Spouses called bride kidnapping "a sin against the sacrament and against the dignity of women" and told priests to hear the bride's consent alone. In 2015 a 19-year-old woman abducted in a village of Kara-Buura District escaped after two days and pressed charges; the court at Kyzyl-Adyr only fined her abductor, and women's groups began the Ak Jooluk ("white headscarf") campaign. On 8 March 2017 the legislature passed the Abduction for Marriage Act, with penalties of five to ten years' imprisonment, rising to twelve where the victim is under 18. Prosecutions remain rare, and the act does not apply in the ATR, where clan councils differ on whether an abducted woman who stays is married.[3][14]

Researchers caution that victims of domestic violence, like those of bride kidnapping, rarely report to the police, and the official crime statistics are not considered a guide to its extent.[15]

Work and economy

Making the mosaic felt carpets called shyrdak is traditionally women's work and part of a bride's dowry. Since the 2000s women's felt-making cooperatives in the ATR, many of them organized by Klara Zhumabek kyzy, have become a source of cash income for herding households, selling rugs and saddlecloths in Talas and abroad; a women's cooperative in the Chatkal valleys makes the smoked kurut of the Talas Dairy Processing Combine.[16] Women traders are a fixture of the Bazar-i Kalan in Talas, and in Nurzhan most of the 1,100 workers of Zhetysu Industrial Textiles are women. Among the founders of the Tulpar messaging app, Aiperi Kalysbek is its chief technology officer.

Labor migration carries particular risks for women. Because ISEZ passports are not recognized by most states, many Iradis travel abroad through recruiters on borrowed or bought documents, and young women from poor districts such as Jogorku have been recruited with offers of work as waitresses and cleaners in Turkey and the Gulf states and then held by their documents and debts. The Irad Fellow-Countrymen's Association handles dozens of trafficking cases a year (see Organized crime in Irad).[17]

Health and education

According to the ISEZ Statistical Office, life expectancy at birth in the ISEZ in 2023 was 75.6 years for women against 67.2 for men, and the total fertility rate was about 2.1 children per woman, falling to about 1.8 in Talas. Records of the St. Luka Community Health Mission suggest a fertility rate of more than three children per woman in the ATR, where maternal and infant health indicators lag well behind those of the ISEZ.[18][19]

Schools under the territorial Office of Education introduced girls' football teams in the 1990s, and the six-club Women's League, founded in 2009, is led by the women's teams of Tulpar Talas and Universitet Talas; the women's national team has been captained since 2019 by Begimai Asan (see Football in Irad).[20] Women also ride in the courtship chase kyz kuu ("chase the girl"), in which the woman chases the man on the return run and tries to strike him with her whip.

Religion

Women have a visible part in Iradi religious life. Women sing the lament (koshok) at funerals, and older women usually perform the juniper purification rite (alastoo) in the home. Women cover their heads in the cathedral at Iyık Janyl, where white scarves are lent at the north door. The Order of St. Janyl the Hermit has a women's branch, and the Sisters of the Cross of Irad, founded by Sister Maryam Janyl, run the St. Maryam Catholic Academy in Talas.[6][21]

See also

References

  1. ^ Human Rights Watch (2022). Civil Liberties and Judicial Dualism in Divided Irad. New York, pp. 45–62.
  2. ^ Talas State University Press (2018). Clan and Kurultai: Governance in the Autonomous Tribal Regions. Talas, pp. 132–160.
  3. ^ Human Rights Watch (2022). Civil Liberties and Judicial Dualism in Divided Irad. New York, pp. 63–78.
  4. ^ Central Asian Folklore Society (2021). Epic Cycles and Horseback Chants of the Northern Valleys. Talas State University Press, Talas, pp. 135–158.
  5. ^ Talas State University Press (2011). Iradistan: A History of the Iradi SSR, 1925–1991. Talas.
  6. ^ Iyık Janyl Diocesan Archives. Synodal Decrees and Pastoral Letters, 1993–2023. Iyık Janyl.
  7. ^ Territorial Legislature of Irad (1996). Domestic Relations Act. Territorial Gazette, Talas.
  8. ^ OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (2023). Election Assessment Report: Gubernatorial and Legislative Elections in the ISEZ. Warsaw.
  9. ^ Talas State University Press (2012). Parties and Elections in the Territory of Irad, 1992–2006. Talas, pp. 23–118.
  10. ^ Department of Public Information (2019). Official Biographies of the Governor and His Family. Talas.
  11. ^ Iradi Freedom Society Chancellery (2022). Compendium of Customary Law (Adat) and Pasture Demarcations. Aksay Plateau.
  12. ^ Central Asian Demographic Review (2019). 'Surnames and Patronymics in Post-Soviet Irad.' Vol. 12, pp. 41–60.
  13. ^ Talas State University, Institute of Sociology (2022). Marriage, Consent and Household Formation in Rural Irad: Survey Report. Talas State University Press.
  14. ^ Talas Herald (9 March 2017). 'Legislature passes bride abduction law.' Talas.
  15. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2025). 'Counting Crime in a Divided Territory: The Limits of ISEZ Statistics.' Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 188–207.
  16. ^ Talas State University Press (2020). Wool and Women's Work in the Autonomous Tribal Regions, pp. 40–66.
  17. ^ Irad Fellow-Countrymen's Association (2025). Annual Report. Moscow.
  18. ^ ISEZ Statistical Office (2024). Demographic Yearbook of the Irad Special Economic Zone, 2023. Talas.
  19. ^ St. Luka Community Health Mission (2023). Annual Report: Rural Health Services in the Autonomous Tribal Regions. Talas.
  20. ^ Talas Herald (30 May 2022). 'Football without FIFA: Three Decades of the Irad League.' Talas.
  21. ^ Central Asian Botanical Review (2021). 'Ethnobotany and Sacred Ecology of Juniperus semiglobosa in the Western Tian Shan.' Vol. 19, pp. 64–82.
What links here (3)
Categories:

Main page · All pages