ABSTRACT
The Former Soviet Union provides an optimal place to examine gender and ethnicity within the framework of democracy because the emergent countries are the pivotal regions and the pilot tests of democratic theory and assistance. Kyrgyzstan’s democratic reforms provide the greatest amount of freedom in Central Asia, which could either mean space for human development, progress, and democracy or could mean, as feared by other Central Asians, space for chaos, ethnic conflict, and outright war. Ethnicity in Kyrgyzstan is at the center of a complex web of economic, social, and political relations. Gender relations in countries that are transitioning to democracy while simultaneously strengthening an Islamic identity produce bizarre paradoxes. The new “remembered” Muslim influence is highly varied but is predominantly concerned with the renewal of traditions that increase male power. In Kyrgyzstan, tribalism results in practices such as the revived aksakal courts.
