Agency within Subordination: Tajik Women's Experiences with Arranged Marriages

Investigating particularly the question of arranged marriages in the context of independent Tajikistan, this work provides insights into various forms of oppression that shape Tajik women?s lives, while at the same time trying to show that although women in Tajikistan are being discriminated against in many ways, they nevertheless manage to manoeuvre behind the scenes and affect outcomes. The present work attempts to reach beyond the misinformation or apprehension of arranged marriages per se and, instead, tries to understand the cultural, social and economic context in which such marriages take place. The particular interest of the present work is to explore Tajik women?s agency in order to see what forms it takes both when women face the pressure to accept a marriage and afterwards. The book provides a rather small, but fascinating collection of women?s narratives about their experiences with arranged marriages. The present work and the stories narrated within it is written in an attempt to challenge the victimization discourses about Tajik women and to investigate the coping strategies and techniques that these women adopt and use in order to obtain (more) power.