WUNRN
Women's
Rights Project Employs Film As Advocacy Tool By Nikola Krastev
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Sairash,
the main character in the film "Elechek," in March 2006 |
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(RFE/RL) |
NEW
YORK, November 20, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Seven short documentary films have emerged
from an ambitious project by the Open Society's Institute's Network Women's
Program to focus attention on the plight of women in post-Soviet societies. The
films confront some of the most acute gender problems in countries like
Armenia, Georgia, Lithuania, Russia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine --strained
transitional societies -- through the eyes of local directors.
The
OSI's seven-film project is called "Gender Montage," and was produced
by local filmmakers in cooperation with women's rights advocates and
researchers. Some of the accounts are grippingly eloquent. The best of them
transcend "in-your-face" moralizing to probe humanity under inhuman
conditions.
Three's A Crowd
In the Kyrgyz film "Elechek," Take Sairash is a woman who rejects her
husband's polygamy. Spurned for a younger wife by a man with whom she has spent
the best years of her life and whom she still dearly loves, Sairash refuses to
accept the situation but finds it increasingly hard to fight. Scornful
relatives, a judgmental community, inequitable divorce laws -- nothing seems to
protect her.
Breaking the shackles of tradition and prejudice, Sairash eventually discovers
herself and emerges as strong and independent -- capable of standing up for her
own beliefs.
Nurgul Asylbekova, from the OSI's Women's Program for Kyrgyzstan, which
produced "Elechek," tells RFE/RL that four in 10 Kyrgyz women who
seek psychological counseling are affected by the stress of being sidelined as
second or third wives. Sairash's case is not isolated, she says.
"Usually the first wives turn [to counseling], but also the second and
even the third," Asylbekova says. "First wives are looking for advice
on their property rights and psychological counseling. Young wives are also
looking for advice because they are vulnerable in the property issues, they
worry about children's rights, and so on. Why has this problem been
resurrected? After [Kyrgyzstan] gained independence, women were sidelined on a
massive scale everywhere. The industries [in which women worked] are in
disarray -- women who were employed in the light industries and had some rights
are now practically on the street. They have no social protection at all and no
guaranteed social rights."
Asylbekova claims that such factors have led to a revival of a more patriarchal
attitude in Kyrgyzstan -- regarding women as property, as objects of desire and
pleasure, but also as a work force.
With no women in parliament, legislative help is probably far off. Prevailing
"traditional" wisdom dictates that it is better for a woman to become
a second or third wife than to remain out of wedlock.
Asylbekova says polygamy has become fashionable and has even led to heated
competition among Kyrgyz men for multiple wives.
Migrant Lives
"New Penelope" is another documentary from Central Asia -- this time
Tajikistan. Women whose husbands have left for Russia to work as migrant
laborers evoke comparisons with the eponymous wife of the mythical Greek hero
Odysseus, who waited patiently for him to return from war.
The men's absence places a heavy burden on these Tajik women, who must provide
for themselves and their children until the men can send money home.
Sometimes the money never comes, forcing wives to enter polygamous marriages
simply to feed themselves and their children. Marital bonds are tested and
often break apart. But the wives at home and their husbands abroad face similar
fates: grueling labor and abuse.
Zuhra Halimova, the executive director of OSI-Tajikistan, tells RFE/RL that the
effects of thousands of Tajik men leaving to find migrant work can be seen
within all layers of society, and in the film.
"It's actually talking about the generations of women: the mothers who are
feeling sorry for their daughters, the wives who are waiting for their husbands
and feeling sorry for them because they know that the conditions in which
[their husbands] are living are not pleasant -- they had to leave and they also
suffer," Halimova says. "And at the same time, [the film] provides an
opportunity to actually look at human capacities in which the constraints in
life due to the circumstances are making them act differently from the way they
would usually be in their traditional context."
Halimova says that polygamy in Tajikistan is a result of class and economic
diversification in the society. Those who can afford it take second or even
third wives.
Armenian Collision
Armenia provides another of the OSI project's works, called "Women's
Happiness Or Men's Dignity." This film examines the conflict between
tradition and modernity through the lives of two women: One protagonist is a
divorcee who as a struggling artist liberates herself and finds creative fulfillment;
the other is a widow who dreams of happiness within a male-headed household.
Despite their places at opposite ends of the social spectrum, both women work
hard and raise families as single mothers:
Armenuhi Tadevosyan, the Women's Program coordinator of OSI-Armenia, tells
RFE/RL that the drive for modernity -- or as she calls it,
"Europe-ization" -- of Armenia collides with tradition.
"The characters...have two extremes, and it is really the same in the
society," Tadevosyan says. "There is polarization, and you can see
two camps in the society -- for example, one that is following traditions,
[and] the other one that is protesting. And sometimes it is very difficult to
set up discussions between these two camps."
Although each of the seven films examines specific issues, there is a
distinctive thread that unites them all: an increasing drift from what it is
still described as "post-Soviet." Even the lingua franca of the
former empire -- Russian -- has given way to local tongues.
But the each of these films' settings appears to be pursuing its own path of
development 15 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union -- and they have
fewer and fewer common strings.
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