Authors

Discussion

Prior to beginning field research with women active in NGOs working on gender issues in Kyrgyzstan in 2009-2010, my engagement with the literature on gender issues in post-socialist societies had primed me to expect an outright rejection of the label feminist[1] among my respondents. Instead, answers to the question ‘so are you a feminist?’ elicited a fascinating and varied range of replies. Respondents drew on their professional lives, personal experiences of gender-based discrimination and violence, and contact with international and transnational networks to position themselves in relation to feminism. While feminism was claimed and embraced more often than it was rejected, this often with the caveat that the particular context of gender relations in Kyrgyzstan needed a particular form of feminism. In this paper, I will reflect on these responses and what they signified within the ‘donor-organised framework’ that shaped activism for gender equality in Kyrgyzstan in the late 2010s.