Gender regimes: A comparative study of Azerbaijan and Armenia

Since 1991 the world has witnessed dramatic transformations within the former republics of the Soviet Union. Two of these former republics, the neighboring states of Azerbaijan and Armenia, are undergoing conflicts between nationalist discourse and the entrenched policies of the former Soviet Union. These conflicts are particularly important for the women in these countries. For over seventy years, the Soviets attempted to replace traditional norms and rules about the proper and expected roles of women and men in these societies with a Marxist-Leninist model of gender relations. The study applies two models, the Nationalist-Traditional and Socialist-Modernization models, to the cases of Azerbaijan and Armenia. Through the use of the comparative method, these models assist in describing the ideology of the gender regimes in Azerbaijan and Armenia, comparing the similarities and differences of the gender regimes, and explaining the patterns found in these gender regimes.