You’re just a girl Aigul BFI team 2019 – currently in Bishkek “All my life I’ve heard this thing — “you are a girl, be wiser.” I have a twin brother, and my family always threw all the housework onto me. Their argument was that I am a girl. Mom always said that the girl gets married off and she should not stay in the family or else she will be like a “cut chunk of bread”. But the boy will stay in the family. I always argued with my mom, because it seemed terribly unfair
to me. Of course, we divided up the house chores, but my mom always tried to arrange it according to gender. My brother is a boy, so he will take out the garbage, but the girl must wash the dishes, sweep and vacuum. While I was at university, I heard about feminism and realized that I had been a feminist ever since I was a child.”
Gulyaim BFI team 2019 – currently in Bishkek “How did I get into feminism? I think this came from a sense of justice, that everything should be equal. Not a boy or a girl, not of a certain nationality. This has always been there with me on an emotional level. There were no problems in my family. We were four sisters and one brother. My brother never asked us to do something for him, nor did he wait for us to cook something for him to eat. He also took part in household chores, although he still did all the yard work because we had a yard.
As a teenager, I saw that the world was different outside of our home. I started noticing little things when I was visiting my cousins, and the girls in their family had a different attitude and were treated differently. I started noticing that their daughters were not allowed to go certain places. A particular episode has stuck with me. My brother-in-law told his daughters how they should and should not dress. It was all very strange to me.”
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