Whose Security? State-Building and the ‘Emancipation’ of Women in Central Asia

Abstract

Part of the Critical Security Studies agenda is to understand what security means at different times and in different places. This article tells a story of how women in Soviet Central Asia were affected by political/security strategies adopted by Moscow. It focuses on the way in which the Kremlin attempted to use the emancipation of women as a strategy to mitigate the historic influence of Islam in the region and to build a secular and unified USSR. The story raises issues for Critical Security Studies in terms of the referents of security, especially the tensions which arise between the construction of state security and the place of women.