ABSTRACT
This chapter reconstructs the socio-professional trajectories of Tajikistani gender experts from the mid-1990s until 2015. Their social profiles, the positions they hold, and their opinions are heterogeneous. However, as women who are mainly identified as Muslim, they share a “minority” position in numerous contexts, including in international organizations working towards reducing male–female inequalities. While shedding light on the power relations these experts face in their work, the chapter examines the strategies they conduct in order to produce a double legitimation: of their status as gender experts and of gender as a policy field. Using open-ended interviews, life stories, and participant observation, the chapter aims at understanding the socio-professional trajectories of these experts by analyzing the social and political power relations knotted around the production of knowledge and practices in a national context subject to globalization processes.
