Global Perspectives on Motherhood, Mothering and Masculinities by Moraes Andrea; Pearce Tola Olu;

Author:Moraes, Andrea; Pearce, Tola Olu;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Demeter Press
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Empowered through Mothering: Armenian Women’s Agency in Trauma and War in Karabakh1

Sevan Beukian

Introduction

In a 2018 Spiegel Magazine article powerfully titled “A Woman’s World in the Caucasus: Nagorno-Karabakh’s Grand Experiment,” Fiona Ehlers claims that the culture of women’s empowerment is changing, particularly where younger women are taking over powerful government positions. Given that, is it possible to argue that forms of empowerment are developing among Armenian women in Karabakh, even though women are still grounded in their role as mothers? Knar Babayan published an article also in 2018 in Chai Khana2 that covers the stories of the women attending the Kristapor Ivanyan Military College in Stepanakert, which has been recruiting women through a documentary photography project. While the director of the college does not plan to have women on the front lines of the war, women attending the college aim to do exactly that (Babayan). Babayan claims that after the April 2016 war, the college began to recruit women in its organization more actively. These articles show that more attention is being paid to women in Karabakh as well as the changing gender roles. I argue that there has been a change, but in the way that women are increasingly thinking of the totality of their roles in this traditional, conservative, and heteropatriarchal society.

Most studies on gender dynamics in the post-Soviet (and post-communist) region highlight the high level of inequality between men and women, in which the patriarchal system oppresses women, mar-ginalizes them, and excludes them from the public sphere. The conflicts in the 1990s aggravated these inequalities further by reinforcing patriarchy through a militarization of society and politics because “war deepens already existing deep sexual divisions, emphasizing the male as perpetrator of violence, women as victim” (Cockburn, “Gender Relations” 144). The feminist literature in the past few decades has highlighted the necessity of looking at women’s experiences of war and conflict from a gendered perspective of understanding war, security, and peace (Yuval-Davis; Cockburn, From Where We Stand; “Gender Relations”; Enloe, Does Khaki Become You; Bananas, Beaches and Bases; Rubio-Martin; Takseva and Sgoutas). The purpose of this chapter is to engage with such arguments and to show that although the context of war(s) in Karabakh did burden women with the extra care of soldiers (in most cases, their husbands, fathers, and sons)—in addition to the usual care of children—Karabakhi women argue that they are also empowered through their own mothering roles, which is demonstrated through their narratives. This chapter therefore asks the following questions. Is motherhood only a tool of patriarchal and militarized regimes? What can we learn about women’s agency from mothering?

The theoretical framework of this chapter will reflect the complex-ities of this discussion. But one important distinction will be made between motherhood and mothering throughout, which is inspired by Adrienne Rich’s seminal work, Of Woman Born, in which she shares both her theoretical and experience-based insights into motherhood and mothering. This work is vital to understanding the contrast between “motherhood,” as the construction of the patriarchal institu-tion, and

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