Gender Roles or Constantly Cleaning Up the Messes of Others

Yesterday, my co-director was ill with fever and diarrhea. I brought her tea and some Ibuprofen and asked how she was.

“Merrrrrrrrrr,” she moaned. “I have to go home and clean because Daler is such an idiot and my Mom is coming home tomorrow.”

I advised her to stay in bed, that Daler was capable of cleaning the house on his own.
“No, he’s such an idiot,” she responded. “He left the house messy and my Mom will blame me.”
Daler is my co-director’s brother and, like my co-director and the majority of young people in Tajikistan, lives at home with his mother. His mom and my co-director take care of his daily needs because he’s a man and is unable to do so himself. For example, they wash his clothes, they cook his food, and they clean the house for him. While my co-director was working without a break at camp, her brother was working his normal eight hour days, going home, and making a mess.

Unfortunately, because he’s a man, it seems that he lacks the ability to remedy this on his own. And no one, least of all himself, expects him to be able to. Because my co-director is a woman, she should use her time off to clean up after him, while he does what he wants. Her mother expects this. Her grandmother expects this. Even she expects this.

I spoke with another woman at camp about this, who said, “It’s just gender roles in Tajikistan.” She said that, when she got married, she hoped to share household and financial responsibilities with her spouse, but that her mother didn’t see it that way. “Some of the people in our generation are moving forward,” she said, “But others are going in the opposite direction and our parents’ generation is definitely stuck in the old patterns.”

When I think about the women’s movement in the US and how a united group of people worked so hard, not only to gain equal rights, but to change perceptions of the role of women, I can’t imagine something similar in Tajikistan. A women’s movement here would be a much quieter, slower affair. It would take place in individual homes, where educated women would silently press on for their equality; constantly taking two steps forward and one step back, but moving forward all the same. I wish them the best of luck.