Bargaining with Virginity: Regulating Practices in Post-socialist Kyrgyzstan

This article explores systems of social control over women’s bodies demonstrated by discourses and practices which regulate women’s virginity in Kyrgyzstan. Emergence of these discourses are shaped by Kyrgyzstan’s continued post-independence nation-building processes and economic instability. In this context, women’s bodies are at the center of political contestation, ethnic nationalism, and collective power. Findings suggest that women have learned to use their bodies in economic struggles as sources of individual resistance. Drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnography of social media, we identify how young Kyrgyz women relate to the issue and its associated practices. We investigate their strategizing mechanisms and analyze how, in the attempts to undermine patriarchal oppression and optimize their opportunities, their coping strategies may actually contribute to perpetuate them.