Aksoltan Atayeva, Permanent Representative of Turkmenistan to the UN, with representatives of the UN. Photo from the UNDP.

Editor’s note: If you think the image of women in Turkmenistan is bad, the reality is little better. Still, Turkmen women have more indirect and social power than they think, argues neweurasia’s Annasoltan, in this second entry in a new ongoing post series. “I think women could still make a difference by occupying positions that are normally overlooked or undervalued by men. “

In my last post, I briefly explored images of women in Turkmenistan, going back all the way to pre-Islamic times. From Amazons to softies, my have we fallen far. It gets worse when we turn from image to reality, although it’s also not entirely hopeless.

The bad news

In Turkmenistan, and before, in the Turkmen SSR, we have had had to balance careers with getting up early every morning to bake tamdyr in the traditional Turkmen oven and making sure breakfast was ready for their children and husbands. I was having a conversation with a fellow female journalist one day, when she abruptly ended our conversation so she could — I kid you not — barter textiles with the other female workers in her office.

Meanwhile, Turkmen families are exploding with children. Out in rural areas, some families have a minimum of five! So, where are they going to find the time to have any kind of lives of their own?

This is to say nothing about how women are valued in our society — or not. Turkmen parents prefer sons to daughters, and chivalry’s not a concept here. You’ll never find a Turkmen man kissing the hand of a woman, and if you do, he’ll be ridiculed as not acting “manly” (a favorite example of a manly man include the academician Bibi Palvanova).

The good news

Having said all that, I think women could still make a difference by occupying positions that are normally overlooked or undervalued by men.  In Turkmenistan, education and health care are two major areas that have been neglected over the decades. They also happen to be the areas considered the most appropriate for women. As the Turkmen saying goes, our women are “mothers with hearts”.

We actually have more indirect and social power than we might normally believe. Every year 100,000 students graduate from secondary school. Who are their teachers? Women. And you can imagine how much our society is in need of doctors and nurses, especially after all the damage that’s been done to it by decades of totalitarianism (read my special coverage of Turkmenistan’s crumbling healthcare system here). Those positions, too, will eventually be filled by women.

In at least one instance, we’ve seen one woman use these “feminine” positions to her political advantage — Aksoltan Atayeva, a former minister and health and now the head of Turkmenistan’s permanent mission to the United Nations. Not bad.

Which leads me to the next post in this series, when I discuss what it would take for a woman to become president of Turkmenistan. See you then!