The Feminist View from Abroad

I recently completed a one-year contract position at a university in Kazakhstan, and I’d like to talk a little about my experience.

If you’re interested in my reactions more generally to my year abroad, also check out my travel blog, In No Sense Abroad.

First, I consider myself lucky to have been born in the U.S. where, even if things aren’t perfect, we can at least fight to make them better.  My husband pointed out to me last week that all of a sudden I was acting very patriotic about this country, when after a few visits to the UK and Europe I’d stated how backwards the U.S. is in many ways, especially in regards to women and how I’d love to move abroad again.  And it’s true, I have a tendency to go back and forth about my relationship with my native country, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only woman to feel this way.

At least we can talk about the crappy things that go on here, I’d tell him.  At least we can try to make it better.  At least there’s a dialogue, even if trolls do tend to lurk in every dark corner.

As an expat, professional woman in Kazakhstan, the only dialogue I’ve seen women included in (and yes, I will generalize a bit here, because I want this post to be about perceptions, something all women deal with every day, no matter where they live), is how well they keep the home and how much prettier they make the workplace by being there.  No matter how much your career means to you, I’ve had my supervisor tell me on numerous occasions, your greatest source of happiness will always come from your family, and you should hurry up and get one as soon as you can.  Odd enough, from my high and mighty feminist point of view, that these women would say things like that to themselves, but as a woman who took the job solely with a mind to the career I was building, it really was like worlds colliding.

A bit of background about the university at which I was working: Nazarbayev University (named for the 20-year uncontested president of the country) opened in 2011 and was created to bring the “Western” university experience to Kazakhstani students. Faculty and librarians were hired from the U.S., Canada, and Europe to teach and instruction was always to be in English (except for Kazakh classes, which were taught by local teachers in Russian).   These students often learned harsh lessons about academic honesty, and one of the greatest changes for them to deal with was the relatively free atmosphere in general–the “you’re an adult  now” mentality that “Western” college students encounter and which often gets them into trouble with time management, etc.

But the biggest change seemed to be the freedom students had to explore personal, romantic relationships.  Everywhere.  Sharing dorm rooms with three other people often led many to begin exploring in other, more public areas of the university, including the library (I’m a librarian).  I, personally, don’t care what people get up to as long as it’s consensual and on their own time, but it’s also my job to make sure the library is a welcoming environment to all and no one is disrupted when trying to work.  As such, I made a comment while out socially with some co-workers about the fact that the library needs a policy for dealing with this type of potentially disruptive behavior, especially when it didn’t appear completely agreed-upon by both parties involved.  Low and behold, the white male 50’s-ish computer science faculty started up with the “that’s what kids do” line and proceeded to talk about his observations of male to female behaviors in his own classes, in which boys continually pestered girls in various ways to try to get a reaction.  His version, of course, had the boys “wooing” the girls somehow.  I’m sure most of us have experienced this sort of “wooing” and wouldn’t describe it so.  Bad enough he put it in those words.  Worse that he didn’t do anything about it.  Even worse that he mansplained my “cultural insensitivity” for believing girls deserved to go to college harassment-free, no matter what country they happened to be born in.

Disheartening as it is that even when we’re invited (as “Westerners” who supposedly “know better”) we can’t bring the best of our culture over and give this university a fresh start on gender equality that is sorely lacking in the national patriarchal culture generally, I would like to talk about some of the things I brought with me.

I brought two pairs of heeled shoes, on the off-chance that I’d want to dress up for something.  I wore them a maximum of three times.  I brought my make-up (a long-ago gift from my sister).  I wore it twice (once for my wedding).  I brought my overall attitude that the only person I dress up for is myself.  I brought my running clothes, even the cold-weather gear, so that I would work out all year round, even when it was -30F.  I brought the knowledge that the only thing it was fair for people to judge me on was the quality of my work.  I’m happy to say that even though I found myself in a country that objectifies women, though less aggressively and overtly, even more than in the U.S. I was able to stay true to my own view of myself and not feel pressured to somehow be “more like a woman” during my year in Kazakhstan.  Women there, you see, wear three- and four-inch heels even in snow and ice, dress up for work as though it were a cocktail party, and are never seen to exercise.

But the most important thing I brought with me was autonomy over my body, and the knowledge to care for it.  About a year before I left for Kazakhstan, I’d decided to switch birth control methods from oral contraceptive to an IUD. Like many women I know, the only form of insurance I had at the time was the Medicaid Family Planning benefits that allowed me to go to Planned Parenthood.  I was tired of paying monthly co-pays on birth control, tired of worrying about forgetting it, tired of feeling that the only thing that kept me “free” to live my life as I wanted was also pumping unnatural hormones into my body on a daily basis.

I learned about the IUD  from a friend who’d gotten one.  I’d never been told about them by any doctor in the past, and was surprised to learn that in Europe they’re much more popular as a birth control method.  Sex education in high school barely mentioned condoms, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised I never learned anything comprehensive about birth control there, but I was still a bit annoyed.  The state of modern sex education in this country is startlingly medieval at times.

But, for all that, I am glad for the care I received at Planned Parenthood, and will always be an advocate.  It’s the most judgment-free environment I’ve ever been in, and I felt I had a closer relationship to the doctors who treated me, even if I only ever met them once, than I ever had to the “family doctors” I saw for years.  As unsettling and even terrifying as the thought of unplanned pregnancy can be when you’re in a secure situation at home, I never realized how much I, and all women, needed reliable bodily autonomy until I went abroad.  Planned Parenthood and the birth control options they provided me meant that on the two vacations I got to see my fiancé (and later husband), I could relax and enjoy my time with him, instead of worrying that I might get pregnant with six months still left on my contract.

Bad enough, in the eyes of many women I encountered that I’d left my husband all alone (how did he let you go?, I was often asked), but the last thing I needed was to worry about the perceptions of people had I gotten pregnant and then not immediately given up my job to return home.  From conversations with local co-workers who’d earned bachelor’s or master’s degrees in the U.S., Canada, or Europe, medical care in Kazakhstan is great for women if they get pregnant.  As soon as you find out you’re having a baby, you’re automatically signed up for check-ups, tests, the works, all on the government dime.  Kazakhstan values women for their ability to make families. Sex education is virtually non-existent, and birth control is either unobtainable or so taboo that people are reluctant even to buy condoms for the reactions of others who might see them.

I would never give up my job in the U.S. if I decided to have a baby.  If I accidentally got pregnant, I’d consider it my right to decide how to deal with it.  But being 6,000 miles from home , alone, and pregnant was the last thing I wanted to deal with.  Even more unsettling, I knew of two expat families who’d lost pregnancies while living in Kazakhstan within a six-month period.  Coincidental though it may be, it was already a regular fact of life that the water was not safe to drink, and food safety standards were not what they are here in the U.S. Bad enough I had to worry what I was putting in my own body, but to be pregnant and have to worry about the possible bad effects on a new life?

This post, of course, is not trying to say that all women in Kazakhstan fit one mold of femininity, though most of the women I knew who were willing to go against patriarchal customs had lived and studied abroad.  This post is me saying that I’m grateful for the freedoms I’ve been born into.  I’m also grateful for the experience of living in a much different social environment for a year. Rather than simply realizing how good women have it in the U.S. now, as a lot of people like to assert, it’s made me even more committed to gender equality, to reproductive rights, to not being passive about the causes that are important to me.  As trying as it was, I believe it’s a great experience that all women should seek out. You begin to see your own country’s positives and negatives much more clearly through a new cultural lens. Things you easily recognize as wrong or offensive in a foreign country become even more obvious when they are happening at home in your “free, safe” space.

Learning to be foreign in a new country has given me the strength to be different, foreign, and just myself in my own country.