ELIMINATION OF ILLITERACY AMONG WOMEN DURING THE SOVIET ERA: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE CENTRAL ASIAN REPUBLICS

Abstract

The paper examines the mechanisms, stages, and consequences of eliminating illiteracy among women in Central Asian countries during the Soviet era, with particular attention to the cultural, ethnic, and social characteristics of the region. It analyzes the conditions for implementing educational reforms in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, identifying the specific features of gender role transformation, the expansion of women’s access to education, professions, and public activities. The study employs methods of comparative and gender analysis, drawing on statistics, archival materials, programmatic documents, and contemporary academic works in both Russian and English.

The findings demonstrate that state education policies significantly contributed to the growth of educated women, professional mobility, and participation in public life. At the same time, the persistence of patriarchal attitudes, religious and family traditions, as well as the formal nature of equality, limited women’s real autonomy and opportunities. The analysis highlights contradictions between the proclaimed goals of emancipation and the enduring social constraints that persisted across different national and local contexts.

The study concludes that Soviet educational campaigns played a crucial role as a factor of societal modernization, while also preserving a number of traditional barriers and contradictions between modernization and patriarchal practices, which shaped the specific trajectory of gender transformations in the region.