“We came to empower you”: liberal feminist discourse meets everyday experience of women in modern Georgia

Abstract

by Natallia Paulovich
When I first came to Georgia as part of my dissertation research
on the transformation of the position of women in Georgian
society, I immediately became acquainted with non-governmental
women’s organizations as the most accessible field for me
as a young anthropologist. The NGO-activists shared a liberal feminist
discourse concerning the position of women in the country.
At the same time, after spending time with ordinary Georgians,
from whom I rented housing, I heard completely different narrations
about understanding themselves as members of society,
which had nothing to do with the discourse offered by the representatives
of the non-governmental sector. The longer I spent
in Georgian families confirmed my conviction that the views of
local NGOs on the situation of the Georgian woman in the post-
Soviet context are a reflection of the expectations of their Western
donors. The everyday life of the modern Georgian woman possesses
qualities that can be characterized as agentic. In this essay,
I present the dilemmas I was confronted with after learning about
the two different narratives during my stay in the field. My analysis
will be based on criticism of liberal feminism. I will achieve
this by offering an approach that can make a contribution to understanding
the position of woman in post-Soviet society.